by Cynthia Berglez, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Legal Division

From California’s earliest days of physical and economic upheaval, we Californians have tended to be a little more comfortable with change than citizens of less volatile states. And there is no word that better describes the world today than change.

When I began thinking about this post the economy seemed to be improving, but today the Dow is down again, and who knows what it will be when this is published. How can we be ready for the next curve? Look forward, far forward, where the path is clearer. The terrain seems flatter when seen from a distance. See where you’d like to be in ten years, then pull back to where you are now and plan for it.

Business schools used to teach business planning for 5, 10 or 15 years. But for the past 10 years or so, organizations have been saying, “we can’t plan, it’s hard enough to just hang on for the ride.” Maybe they have forgotten the value of planning. A good plan will help a business change with the times, and it will work just as well for an individual, even a librarian. If you plan what you can but don’t carve it in stone, you can be ready for change. But try to keep that distant focus.

Why make a plan?

• It forces you to take a hard look at your current skills. This is good news. You can always add new skills, which helps your brain to stay active too.
• A plan will show you how much money and time you will need to get where you want to go.
• A plan gives focus and direction, relieving stress, streamlining your actions and eliminating distractions.
• Planning compels you to do your homework on market forces and the business environment. This will keep your skills current, and make you aware of changes as soon as possible.

Now, take the first step. You’re a librarian, which means that while you might not know everything, you know how to find it. Find a plan to take you into the next 10 years. There are loads of business and marketing plans on the Internet. We have relevant books in the libraries to which we belong. I just now looked for business plans and our friend Google said “about 88,500,000 results.” I’m sure there must be one you can use.

Think of your career as a business–YOUR business. Network and build your professional support group, among and beyond your librarian colleagues, and develop best practices for your future. I know you’re busy; you have important things to do. Who is going to invest in your career? You are!

References

Debaise, Colleen. “Why you need a business plan,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 28, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125391138155241963.html

Wikipedia “Business Plan” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plan

Cynthia received her MSLIS fairly recently from San Jose State University, after spending the previous 12 years using her MBA in International Transportation. She was looking for something more stable. Flexibility and marketing her skills is something that she has learned by necessity. She enjoys helping others to find a comfortable path in the changing world.  She is currently the President of the San Francisco Bay Region Chapter of SLA, and the West Coast Research Librarian for the law firm Ropes & Gray.

Introduction (Toni Wilson – Chair, SLA CI Division)

We’ve discussed a number of important competitive intelligence concepts and applications during CI Week on the FR365 blog – including the importance and value of analysis and industry-focused practices – all leading to the future readiness of the information professionals responsible for CI tasks and the organizations we serve. Our final post is a fitting wrap-up for the week – focusing on the highest goals of the CI process and its execution.

By Derek L. Johnson

How are you planning to elevate your competitive intelligence game in 2012?

One of the reasons I love fall so much is because it’s a reminder that we need to get our plans in place for the year ahead and get ourselves ready to meet an uncertain future as well-prepared as we can be.

Another reason I love autumn is because it’s football season; and football has important lessons to teach us about competitive intelligence being Future Ready. No football team takes the field without first giving their players the very best preparation before game day. Pre-season training camp focuses players’ attention on the field where they relentlessly drill each position even while strength training in the gym. But effective training also means working together to master the plays necessary to win. Then, throughout the season, preparing together to face each opponent, players unite to study film, keep healthy and stay fit so that, on game day, they can perform at their best.

CI teams are similar to football teams in many ways, particularly the competitive part, but with one critical difference: intelligence managers rarely have their players train together as a team. I hope you’ll help change that by investing in your people as one of the many things you can do today to elevate your game in the year ahead. But you should also be working on mastering your budget cycle, globalizing your perspective, building your internal human network and going beyond competitors.

To help understand how to achieve these goals, we’ve put together a couple of videos we hope you enjoy – part one here and part two here – that we hope encourages you to let your reach exceed your grasp and elevate your intelligence game in 2012. Enjoy!

Derek L. Johnson, CFA is Chief Executive Officer of the competitive intelligence firm Aurora WDC.

by Denise Mc Iver

I’m still in I-school, so I’m new to the information profession.  Prior to going back to school to pursue my MLIS, I worked as a publicist in the music and entertainment industry for over a decade. Upon reflection, there are some lessons from that world that might apply to becoming Future Ready.

First of all, it’s true:  Publicists ARE control freaks (in the best sense, I should add) because that’s what we’re paid to be.  We control the public perception of our clients’ “brand” and we’re the “keepers” of our clients’ dreams and goals – whether they want to secure the cover of Rolling Stone, perform on a segment of The Today Show, or get ranked in the Top Ten on any Billboard chart.  So for me, a former flack in the music business, being Future Ready is all about branding.

Some lessons I’ve learned in my former professional life include…

Begin With the End In Mind: Publicists always begin a new campaign with this as our mantra.  For us, Christmas arrives in July.  If our client’s new album is being released in the fourth quarter, we spend a great deal of energy doing something called “set up” beforehand.  For information professionals and librarians, it might mean doing some setup by taking an audit of our skills, experience, and passion (a key ingredient!). We can then use these as springboards to ‘futurize’ ourselves.

Know Who You Are: Publicists understand that their recording artists have a public persona and the music they create (hopefully) extends this.  Lady Gaga gets this; had she made a boring entrance at the Grammy Awards a few weeks ago, it would have been clear that she wasn’t “on message” and her public would have been surprised, and possibly lost. Love her or hate her – she’s clear about her brand:  One-Who-Pushes-The-Envelope-Off-The-Table.  I’m not suggesting we become Gaga-ized, but it is vitally important that WE define ourselves first so that we can communicate who we are and what our value is to our various stakeholders and constituencies.  Capture the vision, promote it, and remember to stay on message.

“Grow Some Feet”: There’s nothing remotely glamorous about doing a bus tour of any kind (trust me on this!) unless your client is Mick Jagger or Beyoncé. If you want to sell albums, you’ve got to tour – it’s how you build awareness. The same goes for information professionals. I’m not one to sit behind a desk all day, so I hit the “road” (actually the hallways) and do short “drop-ins.”  I let my stakeholders know I’m a co-collaborator with them, and these drop-ins give me the opportunity to anticipate and determine what their needs are, possibly before they’ve even had the chance to think about them themselves.  This is how I make myself visible and sell my value.

Summing it all up:  After the press screening of Black Swan, actress Mila Kunis, who was strapped into five-inch high Christian Louboutin stilettos, expressed how exhausting and painful it was to wear them throughout the long evening. She also remarked how grateful and amazed she was that her publicist had the presence of mind to bring along a comfortable pair of slippers for her to change into as the evening wore on.

Now that’s a lesson in being Future Ready.

Denise L. Mc Iver is a recipient of an IMLS scholarship and attending the MLS program at St. John’s University.  She anticipates graduating in May. She’s a student member of the NY Chapter of SLA.

by Kevin Carroll, Kevin Carroll Katalyst LLC

Think back to your childhood and to the years dominated by playtime, when there were endless hours to fill and the only agenda was to be captivated in the moment, to have fun. But playtime was also productive time, even if as kids we did not realize it. What we thought was entertaining was also instructive. Activities we called tea party, show-and-tell, kick-ball, finger-painting, hide-and-seek, daydreaming, and tag were also exercises in planning, strategy, design, decision-making, creativity, risk-taking, conflict resolution and teamwork.

In play we did not avoid obstacles, we looked for them by voluntarily challenging ourselves. We eagerly tackled insurmountable odds—height, speed, lack of money—to make our desires reality. Using imagination, we climbed Mt. Everest, competed in the Super Bowl, conquered the world or made a house out of a cardboard box. We voluntarily tested ourselves and accepted failure as part of the play. We ran, stumbled, and got up to run again. When we lost a game we simply started a new one. When something did not pan out as intended, we tapped into our seemingly endless supply of cleverness, resourcefulness and/or our creative agility to prototype or experiment with new solutions until we were satisfied. When faced with an enemy or new challenge—be it a competing team, a broken toy, or our friend playing a cop to our robber, an ogre to our princess—we figured out how to win, remedy the malfunction, or flee the imagined danger.

Far from frivolous time, our childhood play was constructive because it strengthened our resolve as well as our skills. Play gave us courage and instilled confidence. No doubt about it, the many forms of play—board games, sports, pretending, arts-and-crafts, writing, exploring, building—required us to invent, analyze, innovate, socialize, plan, communicate and problem solve. Play was serious business in our youth and play should continue to be serious business in our adult life.

Lifelong Play + Creative Confidence = Future Ready!

Kevin Carroll is the founder of Kevin Carroll Katalyst/LLC and the author of three highly successful books: Rules of the Red Rubber Ball, What’s Your Red Rubber Ball?! and The Red Rubber Ball at Work. As an author, speaker and agent for social change (a.k.a. the Katalyst), it is Kevin’s “job” to inspire businesses, organizations and individuals – from CEOs and employees of Fortune 500 companies to schoolchildren – to embrace their spirit of play and creativity to maximize their human potential and sustain more meaningful business and personal growth.