Reposted with permission from The Strategic Librarian (http://strategiclibrarian.com)

by Nina Platt, Minnesota Chapter, Competitive Intelligence, Information Technology, Knowledge Management, Legal, and Leadership & Management Divisions

My summer has been filled with a new job, new industry, new co-workers, new terminology with an overload of acronyms, and knowledge management all the time. I’m going through a transition that has had plenty of surprises for me and more to come if I’m right.

As someone who has been a director in a public library, technical services librarian in an academic library, information specialist, cataloger, systems librarian, technical services manager, and director in law firm libraries, as well as a couple stints as a consultant, I ‘ve had plenty of opportunity to develop and use the knowledge and skills of a librarian. I love my career. It provides me with challenges and variety of work that few people would expect a librarian to experience.

So why would I set aside the library part of the work to take on a role where I will be working as a knowledge manager without any library duties? In fact, I’m part of the company’s talent development team. It’s probably because it is a challenge I haven’t tackled. I’ve worked in knowledge management during the last 25 years but I always had traditional and not so traditional library duties as well. Knowledge management is what I’ve always said I wanted to do. Why then, is the transition so difficult.

While many new librarians are coming into the profession expecting to do work that isn’t traditional, most of us who have been working as librarians find the change just a tad bit difficult. It’s what keeps us from moving forward beyond the boundaries of what we know and will probably be our undoing. At the same time, it is our future. We have a lot at stake here. It isn’t news that the library and our responsibilities as we know them are changing.

You, like me, have probably taken forays into the unknown by stepping outside your level of comfort while taking on new responsibilities. When we do that we start a transition from what we know and how we operate, to the future knowledge and skills we will gain. The change may be easy, but it’s the transition that may send us heading back to what was if we have the opportunity to do so.

When a change takes place, the transition that follows, according to change management expert, William Bridges**, are three phased:

… transition is very different from change. Change is situational: the reduction in the work force, the shift in the strategy, and the switch in reporting relationships are all “changes.” Transition, on the other hand, is a three phase psychological reorientation process that people go through when they are coming to terms with change. It begins with an ending—with people letting go of their old reality and their old identity. Unless people can make a real ending, they will be unable to make a successful beginning.

He then goes on to describe the next phase, which he calls the neutral zone:

This is a no-man’s land where people are (in Matthew Arnold’s graphic image) “Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.” The neutral zone is a time and a state of being in which the old behaviors and attitudes die out, and people go dormant for a while as they prepare to move out in a new direction.

Sounds terrifying, right? Despite the fear it brings, there is hope for a new beginning, which is the final phase:

Only after going through each of these first two phases of transition can people deal successfully with the third phase: beginning over again, with new energy, a new sense of purpose, a new outlook, and a new image of themselves.

While I’ve studied change management and have looked to Bridges as one of the great minds on change process in his focus on the transition instead of the change, when I started this new position, I still stumbled in my recognition of the transition I am in. It wasn’t until this week when I told someone else that I’m going through a transition, that I realized it myself.

I’m not telling my story because I think it is extraordinary. I tell it because I believe we are all going through a transition. We’ve been very focused on helping our users with change but what have we done for ourselves? In past posts, I’ve talked about doing what we need to do to stay relevant. If we want to be here to experience working with users, information, knowledge, and more in the future, we need to focus more on the transition we are going through rather than the change.

How do we make it through all this? We need start by saying goodbye to what we’ve known. This is where I am struggling – you may be struggling with it too. If Bridges is right, we won’t make it if we try to hang on to the past. If we do let go, the neutral zone in the next phase, will be a time when things just don’t seem right and we will probably want to go back to what we’ve known. If we manage to keep moving forward, we will experience times that make changes worth it. Bridges tells us that the neutral zone is a place where innovations and experiments are possible. When we get to our new beginning, we will arrive with new ideas, ready for the future.

Saying goodbye isn’t easy. The good news is, even if the changes we’re experiencing now and in the future seem troublesome, and the transition to the new beginning is fraught with frustration, we have a lot to look forward to. I say, let’s go for it!

** William Bridges, author of several books on change and transition including:

by Vicki Valleroy, Pacific Northwest Chapter, Competitive Intelligence Division

Recently Best Practices for Corporate Libraries was published, in which 57% of the authors were SLA members!  As one of the authors of the chapter titled “Application of Technology & Change Management in Staff Development”, I would like to share some excerpts that touch on some essential future skills.  Enjoy!

“Future skills include not only specialized skills but pivotal skills, such as project management and leadership.  The requirements for Library Specialist and Librarian positions were reviewed to determine what education or specialized skills were to be extended to include more in-depth technical knowledge, content management and information management skills, in addition to expanded skills/knowledge about copyright, intellectual property, metrics, and process based management skills.  Specialized skills are defined as tactical areas that are not unique across the company.  Acquiring these skills are the responsibilities of the staff as they develop and share their career goals and aspirations with their managers.

As important as the skills themselves is the staff’s willingness to change.  We researched change management principles and practices and chose those elements that we felt we could influence and/or control.  We created programs or activities to address these issues.  We attempted to augment our readiness to change by giving the staff adequate information, social support, participation in decision making, personal impact, and efficacy (an individual’s confidence in their ability to perform adequately in the new environment).

Due to the time needed to plan the approach and the implementation time needed, the staff development team took several years to address the issue of future skills and staff training.  During the first year, we established the future skills needed for our new library delivery model.  In the second year, the team addressed library specific competencies needed for new research and communication tools.  The team restructured the training and self-development goals by targeting specific competencies to support the company’s skills initiative.  A more focused approach to develop technical skills was needed to deliver services.  Building on the Special Libraries Association’s innovative “23 Things” self-directed training program, the team developed the Core Competencies goal, which specifically targets staff applying and demonstrating skills in selected areas.”

As professionals, we need to encourage and support each other  to take control of our own learning, to use available technology to optimize both interpersonal and professional competencies, and to put into use our ever changing lifelong learning skills.

Vicki began her professional career in health information management, developing future skills by supervising over 30 staff members on two campuses; coordinating the upgrade of computer software and hardware for medical records and coding; and participating in staff/management labor union negotiations.

After receiving her master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Washington, she joined Boeing Library Services.  Currently she is co-leading the merging of the ViRT (Virtual Reference Team) and Research teams, and is particularly interested in using employee involvement best practices in developing high performance teams.   Recently Vicki completed the Change Management certificate program offered through Pepperdine University.  In 2009 she was honored with The Boeing Company’s (SSG) Shared Services Group Service Ambassador Award. She is actively involved in professional associations, locally and nationally, currently serving on the SLA 2012 Conference Planning Advisory Council.   Vicki is a co-author of “The Application of Technology and Change Management in Staff Development” in the newly published book Best Practices in Corporate Libraries.

by Debbie Schachter, Western Canada Chapter, Information Technology Division

It is a pleasure to be able to contribute to the Future Ready blog for 2011, particularly as I’ve recently been thinking about the past and the future of special libraries and our association, as part of a panel for SLA Western Canada Chapter’s 25^th Anniversary. The conclusions that were drawn by that panel and by the audience were mostly positive about the future, and not unexpected. Beyond the specific technology predictions offered, people generally talked about:

• the need to continue learning new skills;
• the need to develop community engagement processes with our users;
• the need to continue to network and support each other. 

I think one of the most important things that we can do to get ready for the future is to build a good personal foundation today; and we do that by developing our change management skills in both personal and professional contexts. It is said that you make your own “luck” through your plans and actions, rather than simply responding to the events that happen to you. If you are prepared, either through continuing education, new skills development, or even just psychologically prepared for the unexpected, you will be better prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. 

Scenario planning is a great way to do some of the mental exercises required for thinking of the future. Once you have started to look at some alternative realities, it is a heck of a lot easier to begin planning for these than if you are simply reacting to what is happening, as it happens. It is difficult to predict the future but we can plan scenarios based on what has happened before, and what we are seeing today. When I think about the work that I will be doing next year, I expect that much of it will be the same type of work, but there will be the challenges of unexpected changes, and obstacles that will need to be addressed, and skills that I will need to learn. 

I also want to say that the power of a movement, such as the Future Ready movement, can accomplish a lot for all of us. I don’t know what I will be doing in five or ten (or two!) years, but I do know that there are lots of smart librarians out there who are also thinking and planning and sharing. One of the areas in which we do excel is in our networking and sharing. The very nature of the Future Ready movement is about bringing the profession into the future together.

Debbie Schachter has held multiple leadership positions in SLA’s Western Canada Chapter.