Hello from the nation’s capital!  DC/SLA is excited to be contributing all of this week’s FutureReady365 posts (thanks to our future-thinking Communications Secretary, Chris Vestal).  We are a diverse community of 800+ information professionals, with members from D.C., Maryland, Virginia, as well as 30 other U.S. states and 12 countries.  You’ll see this diversity reflected in the range of future ready ideas presented in posts throughout the week.  We hope our posts will spark some thought and conversation and, of course, your comments. Most of all, we want to help keep the spark of the FutureReady blog alive  – a spark that’s become a fire, gathering us around it to brainstorm our way into the future. — Mary Talley, DC/SLA President (2011)

by Laura Soto-Barra, Washington, DC Chapter, News Division

Three years ago, I attended a presentation at the Knight Digital Media Center; Prof. Ernest J. Wilson III, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California welcomed us, NPR leaders attending a seminar in his campus on planning our digital future. Dean Wilson’s main idea was to encourage us to prepare for the future by understanding the digital environment and transform ourselves to accept the disruption. It was then that I learned that that there is a capacity gap in e-leadership that needs to be closed. He said e-leaders are the innovators and early adopters that spread new technologies in their communities and organizations and that e-leaders are scarce. According to Dean Wilson, it is not easy to find the right kind of talent to provide e-leadership and he lists the competencies needed in this new environment as SAKE: Skills, Attitude, Knowledge and Experience.

Translating these competencies for the library field, I believe that there is enough talent among information professionals that makes us e-leaders in our organizations; I’m afraid that we have not been able to unleash that talent because we don’t want to fail or because we don’t have enough confidence in our skills. In this digital workplace there is space for failure. Do a search on “failure:” and you will see how much these days people are talking about it. “Fail fast,” they say and you will learn. Let’s take a look at SAKE.

For Future Ready, we need communications Skills that go beyond a reference transaction or a training session; we need to share ideas and concepts and listen and be able to change our behavior after capturing what we have heard. Librarians know how to do this but we need more flexibility in our concepts. How many times do we alter our procedures when a new librarian arrives in the team and suggests new ideas? We need political skills to navigate an organization to put words into action. This is what we have heard from Steve Abram for decades: work without a desk and walk and talk; Laurence Pruzak told us once in an SLA conference, that librarians engender trust and that we should take advantage of that talent by talking to people.

The Attitudes competence Dean Wilson describes is the description of a librarian: we are passionate, have empathy, our intellectual curiosity has no limits and we know about tenacity in face of opposition and failure; we are constantly asking for inclusion. But something difficult for us is to have high tolerance for ambiguity. Our training is based on rigid concepts and our practices demand consistent accuracy and rigor in applying rules and standards. Can we keep standards and accept ambiguity? We have to take risks and accept that all around us, the environment is inconsistent, contradictory, unstructured and unexpected.

Our professional training gives us Knowledge: we know theories and concepts and have a deep understanding of how to translate and migrate manual practices to digital workflows. We have adopted technologies for decades but now everyone searches, tags content and creates metadata. Go beyond the comfortable and understand web development. Continue traveling as a hobby and participate in multicultural networks that allow you to know people different than you. Cultivate networks outside your library world and apply the new knowledge in your library.

Finally Dean Wilson mentions Experience as a requirement to fill the capacity gap; this experience is obtained by working in different environments, organizations and settings. We should not apply ourselves the label: “academic,” “legal,” “public,” “special”; we are information professionals whose training is transferable. Experience is obtained by taking risks, by moving to work in different cities and different organizations.

If you are a library manager you have tools to prepare your staff to be Future Ready. Prepare budgets that allow travel so that your staff go to conferences and get training; sacrifice collections or furniture for your staff’s training; be creative, inclusive and transparent by designing meaningful jobs that reflect your team’s skills and give them autonomy to modify your practices. Predicate and advocate for SAKE and read John Berry’s article who recommends seeking out the new librarians. That column impressed me and I understood that the new librarians are better prepared than me to close the capacity gaps in e-leadership in the very near future.

LS-B is NPR’s Senior Librarian. She is a Chilean-Canadian-American librarian who has worked in many library settings. She has first hand experience in that information science skills are transferable and highly valuable, that libraries are libraries are libraries, and that you have to re-locate to find the best jobs. Her last two jobs have been in newspapers in Jacksonville, Florida and in Syracuse, New York; in both newsrooms –as well as at NPR–she worked with highly competent and smart librarians, obtained strong management support, job satisfaction and professional rewards.

Hello from the nation’s capital!  DC/SLA is excited to be contributing all of this week’s FutureReady365 posts (thanks to our future-thinking Communications Secretary, Chris Vestal).  We are a diverse community of 800+ information professionals, with members from D.C., Maryland, Virginia, as well as 30 other U.S. states and 12 countries.  You’ll see this diversity reflected in the range of future ready ideas presented in posts throughout the week.  We hope our posts will spark some thought and conversation and, of course, your comments. Most of all, we want to help keep the spark of the FutureReady blog alive  – a spark that’s become a fire, gathering us around it to brainstorm our way into the future. — Mary Talley, DC/SLA President (2011)

by Hannah Sommers, Washington, DC Chapter, News Division

To be ready for the future, we should learn better how to fail.  Our culture seems to be taking a moment to consider failure, from the New York Times Magazine feature “What if the Secret to Success is Failure?” to widespread reflection on Steve Jobs’ “wilderness” years between stints at Apple.  A recent estimate suggests that Google fails 36% of the time. And finally, who hasn’t been exposed to an earnest or sarcastic usage of the #FAIL! expression in a conversation, or on Twitter itself?  The zeitgeist has us debating – casually and more seriously – the value of failure.

It’s also something we’ve been doing in our project work at NPR. No one – in management or in project teams – wants to see failure happen on a large scale. Yet, if we fear failure and avoid it at all costs we won’t challenge ourselves to explore ideas we’re not completely sure of. We won’t enjoy the rewards that creative work should bring.

At NPR we’re using an Agile process framework to help expose and contain failure. Ultimately, we want to work without fear of failing. We want to accept small failures as a natural and expected part of the creative process. The Agile framework provides a safety net of rapid development cycles and quick course corrections. There’s lots of good documentation out there on Agile (even a posting on this site), so I won’t go in-depth here. What I will add are a few thoughts on how our profession’s approach to failure could evolve to benefit the communities we work with – to make us all more Future Ready.

If we are not afraid to fail . . . it will probably feel weird for a while.

If we are not afraid to fail . . . we might start thinking about risk differently.

If we are not afraid to fail . . . we might think about our jobs differently.

If we are not afraid to fail . . . we might look at the failures of others differently.

If we are not afraid to fail . . . we might conclude that not trying can be a sort of failure.

If you are not afraid to fail . . . other people will probably want you on their team.

If you are not afraid to fail . . . you will really be in control of that which you can control.

If you are not afraid to fail . . . you will actually fail now and then.

If you are not afraid to fail . . . there may be pain.

If you are not afraid to fail . . . there may be joy.

If you are not afraid to fail . . . you will learn to recover from failures.

Hannah Sommers is Program Coordinator in the NPR Library, where she coordinates the product development efforts of NPR’s Library teams.  She serves as DC-SLA Treasurer and tweets at @hsommers.

by Michelle Mayes, Illinois Chapter, Business & Finance and Taxonomy Divisions

As a child I started autobiographical essays with some form of “Like Columbus, I discovered America on October 12…”A trope usually good for a chuckle from the teacher.

 In some Caribbean countries, Columbus Day is actually called Discovery Day, and with the passage of another year I am finding I am still discovering where the future leads. After eight years in one firm I am again on a path to find out what is next. In my last full-time position, I was the person who was defying stereotypes in a siloed firm, using my skills in research, Web slinging, data mining, and knowledge management in new ways, across silos. On the far side I am finding that being the person who can do anything is great when you’re employed, but such a diverse resume leads interviewers and recruiters to ask “with so many different things you’ve done, what do you want to do now?”

That question took me aback at first. Did they want to hear that I only had eyes for this particular job and discount everything else? Do they think I’ll leave because they can’t offer me a position in all those areas? But when I think about those doubts, I realize it goes against my personal experience of taking what you have and making more from it.

Many pieces on this blog have stressed the importance of stretching yourself to develop new skills, and I have followed that path most of my career, to generally positive results. In my first professional position it meant moving from research to designing the first intranet site (after IT) in the company. In my next position it led to starting a satellite library and taking over hands-on portions of training. In my last position it meant moving from behind the scenes to working on the trading floor.  I have not found every experience ended in a rosy ever after, but as Thomas Edison notes, learning what paths do not work is also valuable.  

So what then is my answer to “what do I want to do now?” I want to keep discovering, I want to keep reaching, and I want to work for someone who values an employee who is always reaching, not to “move up and out” but to say “yes and.”  The future rarely belongs to those who simply fulfill the requirements of the job description.  It belongs to those who, when encountering the unexpected, forge a different path instead.

Michelle Mayes is a member of the Future Ready 365 task force. True to form, she said, “sure, I can set up the blog” even though she hadn’t actually worked in WordPress before.  Previous SLA positions include Webmaster of SLA Illinois’ web site.  

Info-entrepreneurs, represented by the Association of Independent Information Professionals, stand out as innovative, forward thinking, and client focused information professionals.  This series of posts delivers future ready solutions and strategies from current and past presidents of AIIP.  As industry thought leaders they have much to share about staying ahead of the curve and delivering cost effective solutions to clients worldwide.  In this insightful series of postings readers will learn how to create a job for life by listening for opportunity, watching for changes, stretching to acquire new skills, finding a balance, planning for the long term, and drawing on your strengths. — C.S.

by Mary Ellen Bates

When I launched my business back in 1991, I was surprised both by how different it was from my last job as a librarian and how freeing it was to be in control of my professional future. Being a future ready entrepreneur (and I think being future ready is a requirement) has meant constantly pushing myself. The unexpected trade-off to being challenged is that the new skills I’ve built over the years as an info-entrepreneur leak over into the rest of my life as well.

I recently staffed a booth for a local non-profit that I care about. I just picked up brochures, stepped out in front of the booth, and started approaching everyone who walked by, inviting them to find out more about us. The other booth volunteers were amazed. “You just walked up to someone and started talking?!?”

I realized at that moment that all those years staffing conference booths for my business really paid off. I had finally learned that it is, in fact, not at all scary to walk up to people and offer them info about a group. Had I not pushed myself to develop a skill I needed for my business, I wouldn’t have been able to let people know about a local group that I think is doing amazing things.

Fortunately, there’s no need to give up your paycheck just to think like an entrepreneur; you can be an intrapreneur within your own organization. As I reflect on the entrepreneurial skills that are most valued by employers, I realize that most of them are the skills that any future ready info pro needs.

* Look at yourself as a brand, and identify what tangible value you are providing to your organization. How does what you do for your (internal) clients advance the goals of your organization? Are you seen as a strategic asset who brings a unique perspective to a team or project? Can you explain your value in one sentence, in a way that others will hear and understand it?

* Be responsive. In this SMS-driven world, it’s remarkable to find someone who answers the phone when it rings. If someone texts you, respond immediately – even if just to say that you are busy and will call/email/text back later. Pick up the phone to talk directly with clients, because you know that the personal touch makes you memorable.

* Think like your clients. Read the newspapers, magazines and blogs that your clients read. Really. Even when you don’t have the time. The insights and perspectives you gain make you that much more valuable to your clients and enable you to be seen as a partner.

* Shake things up. Assume that whatever you’re doing now will need to be changed within a year. That updating service you’ve offered for years? Maybe it’s being deleted, unread, from everyone’s email. Put a sunset clause in all your programs and re-examine their usefulness, relevance and popularity regularly.

* Push your comfort level. Learning to network, to speak publicly or to write doesn’t come easy to most people. We entrepreneurs push ourselves from Day One to take on things we have never done before and that scare us silly. And we all learn eventually that, with practice and familiarity, it’s not all that hard.

Commit to doing one scary thing for six months, and you’ll see the magic work. Volunteer to host a brown-bag lunch and talk about the value the information center brings to a project team. Call the head of your SLA chapter or division and offer to take on one responsibility – welcoming new members, planning a webinar, or whatever else gives you an opportunity to stretch yourself. Take a client out for coffee and learn about their concerns. (See owl.li/6kHnQ for tips on conducting “informational interviews.”) You get the idea.

Want tools for building your intrapreneurial skills? Check out the Future Ready Toolkit, available to SLA members at wiki.sla.org/display/future/Home.

Mary Ellen Bates is an info industry long-timer, having started her business in 1991. She provides business research and analysis, as well as strategic business and entrepreneurial coaching. She was AIIP president in 1996-1997 and 2004-2005, and currently serves on the SLA Board of Directors.

This week, SLA Europe take over the Future Ready blog. SLAE has around 250 members in half a dozen different countries. We are a thriving network of information professionals: individuals and organisations within the UK and across Europe come together to benefit from each others’ knowledge and experience. All areas of the information profession are represented by our members -  specialist librarians, researchers, knowledge managers, business insight consultants, information scientists, editors, content specialists, graduates and academics and we’ve got representation in many different divisions.

Geraldine Clement-Stoneham, Europe Chapter, Academic, Biomedical & Life Sciences, Information Technology, Knowledge Management, Leadership & Management, and Taxonomy Divisions

Noone can really predict the future of our profession accurately, but we know too well that it is changing and changing fast. Good business planning in uncertain time involves the development of scenarios with associated plans of action, and an assessment of their likelihood. The assumption is that the best way to cope with uncertain outcomes is to have an array of possible responses available at all times, in the hope that one of them will provide a way to adapt to the new circumstances.

I believe that the same can be applied to career planning, and that the best way to prepare for the future is to seek new experiences in order to develop the ability to apply our core information management skills in different situations.  When we apply for a job, we tend to do so because our skills match the job description. Once we are in the job, at the beginning the new environment brings enough learning opportunities, but over time this gets harder as one settles in daily routines.

I have discovered throughout my career that unexpected activities I volunteered for enabled me to develop skills and experience which put me in a better place when time came to move on to the next job. I am lucky because I am a naturally inquisitive person, so I tend to look for new adventures all the time, having even been described as a “compulsive volunteer”! Whilst some might readily argue that an unusual activity is “outside the scope of their role,” and turn it down, I tend to accept if I think I can contribute valuably, and also get something out of it which I would find enjoyable (such as acquiring new skills).

My willingness to invest my time and skills in projects outside of my comfort zone has not only given me the opportunity to work alongside great people who shared their expertise, but also enabled me to influence outcomes and demonstrate the value of my professional knowledge. When I didn’t get the opportunity to grow my skills in my work place, I volunteered in my local SLA chapter. There I have been fortunate to work alongside people willing to share their experience and trust me to take initiatives forward. Today I know that I often rely on knowledge and skills that I have developed working on projects not mentioned in my job description. Many have demonstrated that to be “future ready” one must be flexible, and I would encourage everyone to seize new opportunities and develop new responses to a world that is constantly changing.

Geraldine Clement-Stoneham is an Information and Knowledge Manager at the Medical Research Council UK, where is she is responsible for knowledge and information management policies and systems, including records management, as well as the day to day management of a team of six. Her previous experience includes working as a researcher in a investment bank and managing an information unit for a large international law firm, providing support to lawyers and business development teams. She obtained an MA in Musicology and English from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and an MA in Library and Information Management from University College London. She was the SLA Europe Chapter President in 2009 and currently serve as as the Membership Chair and an Alignment Ambassador. She is a member of the SLA Information Ethics Advisory Council.

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 Kama Siegel, Oregon Chapter, Solo Librarians Division

Without being overly derivative of all of the posters who have come before me, I’m going to discuss many of the themes you’ve heard throughout the life of this blog. Except that I’m going to apply it to recent events in my own professional life by making it into a story. Don’t worry, though, the themes will be easy to spot.

Once upon a time, I was content — if a teeny bit bored — at my position as a law librarian at a mid-sized firm. Particularly in this economy, in the extremely competitive city of Portland, Oregon, I counted myself lucky to have a job at all. But I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to be a law librarian for the rest of my career.

Someone close to me has a position in a small company whose mission and structure I admire very much. After a few years, I decided I wanted to also work at this company, so I set about figuring out how. (Theme #1: be proactive!) I had met the president of the company a few times at non-work events, and had actually gone in and spoken to a few staff members about how to maximize their use of social media. (Theme #2: show them your “extra” — thanks, Thomas Friedman!)

Then a setback: they didn’t think they’d have money in the budget to hire me until the beginning of 2012. (Theme #3: be flexible!) I dug into my duties at the law firm with renewed vigor (Theme #4: give your very best service to your patrons!) and waited to hear from the other company. A few weeks later, I got a call from the CFO, asking me if I’d like to come in and talk to him about a different project, one for which I had very little experience. (Theme #3 again.)

Long story short, I was able to convince the CFO that I could without a doubt do this extra project about which I knew next to nothing (Theme #6: be confident! Also, Theme #7: step outside your comfort zone!). Successful completion of the project will subsequently make me indispensable to the company, and we will live happily ever after (Theme #8: be optimistic!).

The purpose of this post is not to toot my own horn about my new position, but rather to illustrate that taking on an opportunity that drops into your lap = future ready. Being willing — note that I do not use the word “unafraid” — to dive into unfamiliar territory = future ready. Knowing you can machete your way through that territory = future ready. And in my case, plunging my career into glorious chaos = future ready (Theme #9: blaze your own trail!)

Kama Siegel is the President of the Oregon chapter. She recently left her stable, cushy, 16-year career in the legal field to plunge headlong into the unknown at Alta Planning & Design in Portland, Oregon.

by David Cappoli, Southern California Chapter, Academic, Business & Finance, Information Technology, Leadership & Management Divisions

Even if I have just awoken from a long sleep; consumed a rich, dark chocolate bar followed by a Mountain Dew; and, had the din of my daughter’s anime videos assaulting my ears, when one of my cats melts on my lap in a curl of fur and legs, I am in a near perfect zone of comfort. Nothing can keep the warmth, soft fur, and purring, from combining to be a harmless but powerful narcotic lulling me into a contented state. At home and professionally, we all have our different comfort zones. And we generally wish to stay right where we are when we are feeling, well, nice and comfortable.

But professionally, while we all have comfort zones in which we prefer to work, we need to take on challenges that push at those boundaries of easy contentment. I am not advocating that we work in environments in which we are ill at ease. I am, though, promoting that we take chances when we might otherwise shy away from them because they represent the untried and unknown.  To be ready for the future, we need to drop that wariness and embrace a confidence that makes us willing to investigate options, broaden our skills, and constantly learn new approaches to solving problems. When asked to take on something new, yes, we can fret, but then we need to get beyond any dismay and start moving forward.

As librarians and information professionals, we have a strong service orientation that does not always bleed into a personal assurance when confronted with the untested. The inclination may be to say, “No, I’ve too much to handle at this time.”  Or, “That’s not my responsibility.” Whereas, we show our worth by responding, “I don’t know much about that, but let me do some exploring, and I’ll get back to you.” With this answer we’ve stated that we are not well-versed in the topic put to us, but we are more than willing to take up the challenge.

While we can search the literature and browse web sites in search of answers, we have our professional networks that can offer insight as to the best way to advance.  And we have SLA’s 23 Things, vast libraries at our disposal, webinars, continuing education opportunities, etc., all of which can make us better.

Moving out of our comfort zones not only enhances our own abilities, but our value as well.  And it is the only way to thrive in an ever-changing present and future.

David Cappoli is the digital resources librarian at the UCLA department of Information Studies. He is former president of the SLA Southern California chapter (2008) and was the chapter’s treasurer from 2004 – 2006. David was a member of the 2009 Centennial Commission of SLA, and a member of the 2009 Conference Planning Committee. Prior to coming to UCLA, he was a librarian at the LA Times, and was research database coordinator with Glasgow Polytechnic in Scotland.