by Lorri Zipperer, Rio Grande Chapter, Leadership & Management Division

Learning from failure is a key element of the systems thinker.¹

As my colleague and SLA Board member Sara Tompson and I have touted, systems thinking sensibilities illustrate an opportunity for librarians and the organizations they serve². To build onto the element of learning from failure that Edmondson³, Shumaker⁴ and others have stated it is important for an organization to learn, I’d like to suggest a new special librarian: the failure librarian.

Organizations need to have a strategy in place to learn from their mistakes. Whether the mistakes are one at a time – as in health care – or affect a huge customer base (i.e. Netflix) the understanding of how information, evidence and knowledge can be brought to bear to understand what happened is critical. This approach looks at evidence to inform direction, identify risks, strategize new approaches, and gain from employee/participant experiences to enrich the decision making process. Who better to help with that then the special librarian, as:

• We understand networking.
• We understand the value of information and how to find it.
• We understand what evidence will be most applicable where, when and for whom.
• We understand our leadership and what makes them tick.
• We understand how biases can affect decision making which enables us to seek to counteract them with good information and evidence⁵.
• We understand the boundaries and silos in our organizations and how to navigate them successfully to connect knowledge workers to enable innovation and problem solving.
• We understand that both explicit and tacit knowledge are important for decision making and seek to find both types of knowledge and respect the conduit no matter where it may exist in the organizational hierarchy.
• We understand that blame-free exploration into what went wrong is the only way to move improvement forward.
• We understand that mental models can both have negative and positive effects and seek to reveal those when they affect decision making and action amongst our staff, our peers and our management.
• We understand that a commitment to generating evidence-based solutions will enable them to be sustainable, efficient and effective.
• We understand we too can play a part in failure and seek to improve our own processes and behaviors to counteract those factors.

Or at least we should.

Our future has within its sights the potential as a positive force in many industries if we deeply understand these things and are ready to recognize failure as an opportunity to partner, innovate, and excel.

1. . The Fifth Discipline. New York, NY: Random House; 1990.
2. . “Systems thinking: a new avenue for involvement and growth.” Information Outlook. (December 2006): 16-20. (http://www.sla.org/io/2006/12/) Find Articles has posted the article as well http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FWE/is_12_10/ai_n27098382/
3. . Strategies for learning from failure. Harvard Business Review. April 2011;89:48-55. Available at: http://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-for-learning-from-failure/ar/1
4. . ‘Brilliant Mistakes’: Finding Opportunity in Failures. Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2869)
5. . Before you make that big decision… Harvard Business Review. June 2011;89:50-60, 137 Available at: http://hbr.org/2011/06/the-big-idea-before-you-make-that-big-decision/ar/1

Many thanks to my colleagues in the Rio Grande chapter who had a spirited conversation on the Edmondson article that contributed to the thinking that helped to generate this post, and Sara Tompson for editing the draft.

Lorri Zipperer, MA is a cybrarian and the principal at Zipperer Project Management in Albuquerque, NM. Lorri has been in the information field for over two decades, over half of which have been focused on health care. She was a founding staff member of the National Patient Safety Foundation and currently works with clients to provide patient safety information, knowledge sharing, project management and strategic development guidance.  She was recognized with a 2005 Institute for Safe Medication Practices “Cheers” award for her work with librarians, libraries and their involvement in patient safety and her expertise was highlighted in the June 2009 Medical Library Association policy on the role of librarians in patient safety.  Ms. Zipperer contributed chapters on knowledge sharing work for medical librarians and systems thinking as a strategic development approach to core library management publications in early 2011.  She is currently editing two books for Gower Publications, UK on knowledge management (http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9781409438830) and knowledge evidence information sharing in patient safety (http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9781409438571).

By Sara Tompson (Southern California Chapter) with input from Lorri Zipperer (Rio Grande Chapter)

Librarians and Information Professionals are missing a unique opportunity to improve their libraries—to become future ready—and the organizations in which they work! A systems thinking perspective and some systems thinking tools can enable us to lend the value of our information expertise to problem-solving and process-improvement efforts.

“Systems thinking” is a way to view the world, including organizations, from a broad perspective that includes structures, patterns, and events, rather than simply the events. Systems thinking includes:

• Seeing the behavior and the interaction of the parts within the context of the whole
• Building collective thinking for sustained change (AKA being Future Ready!)
• Learning from failure
• Working to dismantle the effects of silo-based activity
• Understanding and respecting how humans can affect the system
• Solving problems in non-linear fashion.

Systems thinking, developed by Peter Senge at MIT and others, draws from engineering process analyses to apply a set of principles for understanding complex-interacting wholes. It is best used to address complex problems where solutions seem elusive as well as problems that reoccur in an organization, especially problems for which past fixes have failed.

Systems thinking can seem, and sometimes be, rather complex, particularly with the use of the discipline’s hallmark loop diagrams – see a library example below from one of Lorri’s and my SLA CE workshops.

On the other hand, basic concepts of systems and the cyclical nature of cycles, and the loop diagrams to represent them, have been grasped by first graders! Check out this video from Systems Thinking in Schools.

Systems thinking enables looking beyond the library – a view that is necessary for survival and success.  As SLA CEO Janice Lachance said in her column in the December 2009 issue of Information Outlook: “…people are not viewed as indispensable based on the function they perform but on the value [my emphasis] they deliver–specifically the clearly understood and essential contributions they make to the success of their organization.”

Employing systems thinking tools, librarians can utilize their time and strategic skills effectively while raising awareness of the importance of their work. Take a look at this “Habits of a Systems Thinker” handout from the Waters Foundation and take just a minute to contemplate how you could incorporate one or more of these habits at work. This could start you on the path of being one of we info pros who employs systems thinking to strategize innovative, sustainable solutions to long term, persistent problems in the workplaces, and thus moves more easily toward the future!

• Tompson and Zipperer recently published a chapter on systems thinking in ABC-Clio’s Best Practices in Corporate Libraries. Portions of the book can be read on Google Books.
• They will be teaching a day-long workshop on systems thinking as part of UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies Friday Forum series on November 4, 2011.
• Systems Thinking Perspective – SLA Biomedical & Life Sciences Division Project
• Zipperer L, Tompson S. “Systems thinking: a new avenue for involvement and growth.” Information Outlook. (December 2006):16-20.
  • Find Articles has posted the article as well.

Sara Tompson is a member of the SLA Board (2011-2013) and of the Southern California Chapter, and has held a number of offices in chapters and divisions.  She is the Head of Library Instruction & Orientation Services at the University of Southern California.  She has worked for years with SLA member Lorri Zipperer on systems thinking in libraries.  For more information on some of their work, please see the links at the bottom of this post.

by Jan Chindlund, Illinois Chapter, Academic, Museums, Arts & Humanities, B&F, LM Divisions

“Yes, I was invited.”

Think back to times in your career (in both your employment and your volunteer work) when you were personally invited to join the team, join the organization, write an article or post, render an opinion, edit a document, brainstorm, manage a project, research a complex issue, or lead.

✓How did the invitation make you feel?
✓What did you think when you were invited?
✓How did you respond to the invitation?

We’ve all heard Victor Hugo’s “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” True. And perhaps, there is no connection more persuasive than the personal invitation.

Recognizing a spark, talent or skill in another person and then inviting them to be involved honors the invitee and inspires them to get involved.

To be “Future Ready” has so many facets: strategic, critical and systems thinking; embracing technology; acquiring and applying knowledge; being politically astute; being nimble, flexible and adaptable; recognizing opportunities; and the list goes on. All important and essential.

Add to that mix: practicing the art of personal invitation. Establishing relationships is the key to gaining insight into situations and opening doors to opportunities to learn and to become involved. Personal invitations are a way to initiate and strengthen relationships.

In this era of high tech, the personal invitation can satisfy our need for high touch.

Seek ways to invite others…and to be invited.

In association volunteer work

When asked to lead, I invite a co-chair to work alongside me. At this point, I invite someone newer to our profession. So we can co-mentor each other. I might contribute knowledge about the organization or work at hand, the other person might contribute technical know-how or insights into how today’s audiences or clientele will respond to messages.

I have been in groups of SLA members when the question was asked, “Who has been hired because of their connection with SLA?”  The majority of hands shoot up…every time!  Well, think back, how did you get involved in SLA? Did someone invite you to join or to be on a committee or to speak?

✓  I attended my first SLA meeting because I was personally invited.
✓  I joined my first chapter committee because I was personally invited.
✓  I ran for office in a division because I was personally invited.
✓  I ran for office in our chapter because I was personally invited.
✓  I wrote this post because I was personally invited.

How did you hear about that job?  Did an SLA colleague inform you about the position, invite you to apply, recommend you?

SLA’s “Connecting People and Information” could be expanded to “Connecting People and Information, Expanding Information to Knowledge & Connecting People to People.” The cross-pollination of what is learned in SLA, and the connections made there, with our professional work is the penultimate value of belonging.

Personally invite others to join and to become involved.

In the workplace

Larry Prusak referred to “ground truth” as one source of wisdom in his presentation at SLA 2011. That resonated with me. Inviting those who are “on the ground” to share their insights is not only good business, but it provides valuable knowledge that can be used to make better decisions. In our professional life, this can provide new knowledge and connections, improving the richness and the quality of the work we produce and the wisdom upon which we make decisions.

Personally invite those “on the ground” to share their “ground truth”

As Kevin Kelly so aptly put it, “The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.” The human attention given through personal invitation is very compelling indeed.

“Yes, I was invited.”

Jan Chindlund has been Library Director, Columbia College Chicago, since September 2007. Previously she was Manager of McDonald’s Corporation Global Consumer and Business Insights Information Center and Assistant Vice President & Head Librarian, Duff & Phelps. Jan holds MLIS from Dominican University and MBA from Benedictine University. She has served in various roles at the chapter, division and association levels of SLA, currently Co-Chair of Local Arrangements for SLA 2012 to be held in Chicago July 15-18, 2012. Recipient of the Dow Jones Leadership Award and the Rose L Vormelker Award, she is SLA Fellow and extremely grateful for the learning, advocacy and networking SLA makes available to members.