Competency D – Management

Apply the fundamental principles of planning, management, marketing, and advocacy.

“Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.”

-Russel Honore

 

EXPLICATION

Planning, management, marketing, and advocacy are key elements in ensuring the success of any organization including libraries.  Planning involves both short- and long-term strategies for advancing and enhancing the mission and vision of a library.  Management involves day-to-day supervision of staff, resources, and facilities as well as overseeing implementation, completion, and evaluation of planning strategies.  Marketing ensures that the user community knows what the library offers them and how it benefits them to use what the library offers.  Advocacy involves keeping stakeholders apprised of successful implementation of programs and services and how they are useful to and used by the community, in order to ensure continued funding.

Planning

The purpose of any organization is defined by its mission and vision statements.  Mission statements address an organization’s long-term values and aims, while vision statements provide the guidance for achieving those aims.  Different types of libraries will have different missions depending on the purpose of the library and the information needs of its users.  Planning entails establishing “meaningful, achievable, and quantifiable objectives” (Hirsch 2015, p.406) based on the purpose of the library and defining how to implement those objectives as well as allocating budgets and establishing criteria for measuring progress and evaluating achievement.  Operational plans address day-to-day activities through establishment of procedures, policies, and rules.  Strategic plans address long-term goals that further the overall mission and vision of the library.  Effective goals are developed by thinking SMARTER: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable,Realistic, Time-frame, Extending, Rewarding (Evans and Ward, 2007, p. 154).  Effective planning begins with a SWOT analysis to identify a library’s internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats.  Ideally, a SWOT analysis incorporates input from all affected and interested parties.  Planning is a forward-looking activity that entails a certain amount of risk, uncertainty, and doubt.  In order to ensure a library’s continued importance to the community, regular planning procedures should be undertaken to identify changes and trends as well as evaluate overall performance with regards to the mission and vision of the library.

Management

Librarians may be called on to manage people, resources, and facilities.  Evans and Ward (2007) assert, “knowing who should make a decision is essential to keeping things flowing” (p.129).  Staffing hierarchies determine where and by whom specific types of decisions are made within the library.  In general, the objectives of any manager’s work include planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting (Evans and Ward, 2007, p. 9).  These objectives remain constant despite changes in the library.  Management styles vary and include:

  • Scientific: focuses on production and workers,
  • Administrative: focuses on overall operation of an organization,
  • Behavioral: humanistic approach focusing on workers,
  • Systems: focuses on interdependence of various parts of an organization with regard to input, transformation, output, and feedback,
  • Contingency: no universal management answers; answers to problems are derived on a situation-to-situation basis,
  • Quality: emphasis on customer satisfaction, and
  • Composite: draws on the best aspects of other management styles.

Mary Parker Follet defined management as “‘the art of getting things done through people’” (Evans and Ward, 2007, p. 7).  It therefore benefits managers to encourage workers to perform well, which is best accomplished by leading through example.  From years of working in an office environment, both as support staff as well as management, I have learned that encouragement of staff is accomplished not only through tangible incentives but also by demonstrating a willingness to undertake any task that works towards the overall benefit of the organization as well as acknowledging the good performance of individual workers.  The multiplier effect speaks to the positive value to an organization of good performance by individuals.  Furthermore, “the combined good efforts of people far exceed what any one person can accomplish and one poor performance has a much greater impact than several good performances” (Evans and Ward, 2007, p. 11).  In other words, a manager is only as good as his or her staff and vice versa.  No matter how well the staff performs, poor management skills can negate or undo the good.

Marketing

No matter how much time and effort is put into planning and executing projects, library programs and services are only meaningful if the public actually uses them.  The user community must be informed about what materials, programs, and services the library offers and why those programs and services are important and useful to them.  Evans and Ward note that a key question to consider when creating a marketing program is “‘Why is a nonuser a nonuser?’” (p.85).  In answer to this question, they identify eight reasons, which, in terms of the “product” of library services, are:

  • Not knowing what the library offers,
  • Inability to locate needed information or unavailability of materials at time of need,
  • Preference for different information sources,
  • Lack of understanding of value offered by library services and programs,
  • Cost versus return: time and effort is more than user is willing to expend for information,
  • Lack of understanding regarding use of library services and programs, and
  • Expectation of poor service (Evans and Ward, 2007, p. 86).

Effective marketing strategies inform the user community what is available and why it is useful to them.  Evans and Ward assert, “thinking about the organization in terms of the user tends to broaden the scope of possible activities” (p. 88).  In terms of marketing, this means understanding how to get information about the library to the user community, particularly nonusers.  It is best to employ a variety of methods for informing the user community about library materials, services, and programs, including social media, websites, flyers, advertisements, news letters, etc.  Marketing is an ongoing activity necessary to keep the benefits of using the library, rather than other sources of information, in the minds of users as well as to draw nonusers to the library.

Advocacy

In regard to libraries, advocacy entails demonstrating to stakeholders that high-quality materials, services, and programs offered meet the community’s needs and that the community is taking advantage of what the library offers.  This is particularly important for libraries that rely on public funding.  Measurable impacts of programs and services should be reported to stakeholders and supporters as a means of demonstrating the merits of investing in the library.  Librarians can also advocate for their organization by providing a regular and active presence at local government meetings as well as local club, organization, and foundation meetings and events, and regular communication with local, county, and state officials.

Advocacy is for the ultimate benefit of library users as effective advocacy garners funding and donations that increase the value of the library to users.  Advocacy that ensures adding and continuing programs of benefit to users is particularly important in correctional libraries.  Because correctional libraries are under the jurisdiction of the correctional organization (usually the Department of Corrections), all materials and programs must be reviewed by the parent organization to ensure that the ultimate goals of the institution are upheld, particularly security and rehabilitation.  It is important that correctional librarians advocate for materials and programs that support the rehabilitative efforts of inmates because the correctional library is often the sole source of these materials for inmates.

COMPETENCY DEVELOPMENT

While most of my jobs have placed me in the position of being “the managed,” I did have one job where I was an office manager.  I managed a staff of nine who provided support for the geologists and engineers in an environmental consulting firm.    I worked hard to master what Mary Parker Follet termed “‘the art of getting things done through people’” (Evans and Ward, 2007, p. 7).  Having been one of the support staff myself for years, I understood how important it was for me to “lead by example.”  My management style could be described as composite (see above) because I had to act as intermediary (and often, mediator) between support and professional staff, manage workflow, and ensure the quality of reports that went to clients and state agencies.  In other words, as a manager I had to wear many hats, which I believe is what a good manager should do, particularly in a library environment where staff and resources may both be in short supply.  Furthermore, I conducted weekly staff meetings in an effort to keep each department apprised of progress on specific projects, upcoming work, and to give staff a chance to air issues and problems as well as ask questions and offer suggestions.

While most of my experience with the principles of planning, management, marketing, and advocacy came in INFO-204, Information Professions, many of my classes offered tactics and skills related to these principles.  In INFO-203, Online Learning: Tools and Strategies for Success, I learned how to create a blog, a tool that can be used in marketing.  In INFO-240, Information Technology Tools and Applications, I created a website, an essential for any library in the 21st century.  And in INFO-282, Correctional Library Management, I learned about managing this special type of library and how to advocate for inmates within the confines of stringent department of corrections rules and regulations.

EVIDENCE

1.  Mission and Vision Statements

Key elements of any strategic plan are an organization’s mission and vision statements.  As noted previously, these statements address an organization’s long-term values and aims as well as provide the guidance for achieving those aims.  Much of the work for LIBR-204—Information Professions revolved around a group project requiring development of a strategic plan for a library or one department of a library.  The type and purpose of the library was at the discretion of the group.  There were three people in my group and, as I was the only one not working fulltime as well as attending school, I took the lead on the project and drafted many of the components.

The group decided our library would be one attached to a children’s museum, with the primary purpose of collecting, restoring, and preserving children’s books to ensure their continued access for future generations.  The first task, then, was to draft mission and vision statements for the library.  In accomplishing this task, I first perused mission and vision statements from a wide variety of libraries in an attempt to get a better understanding of the function of each type of statement.  Once I felt confident in my understanding, I drafted the mission and vision statements provided here as the first piece of evidence demonstrating my understanding of the elements upon which successful planning is crafted.

2.  Management Philosophy

“A good boss helps create a positive atmosphere and recognizes employees for their excellent service, good ideas, and jobs well done” (Auld, 2004).  Over the years, I have worked for a number of different companies in a variety of offices.  I have experienced both good and bad bosses.  The assignment for the second piece of evidence offered—also from LIBR-204—was to read a number of articles on management styles and compose a brief essay describing my management philosophy.  I was particularly struck by Skip Auld’s article “Good boss, bad boss: What makes a good supervisor, manager, director, or other type of leader,” from which the above quote comes, and which embodied my thoughts on what makes a good boss.  If, as Mary Parker Follet believes, management is “‘the art of getting things done through people’” (Evans and Ward, 2007, p. 7), then it is in the best interest of those in management positions to create an atmosphere that encourages employees to want to come to work and perform their jobs in a way that benefits them as well as the organization as a whole.  As the old saying goes, “You get more flies with honey.”

3.  Strategic Plan

As mentioned previously, much of the work for LIBR-204 revolved around a group project for which the culminating product was a strategic plan for a specific type of library.  A strategic plan is a long term plan (2-5 years) whose key elements are an organization’s mission and vision statements.  Strategic plans generally involve a SWOT analysis to assess strengths and weaknesses of the organization as well as determine opportunities and threats that could affect the organization.  Based on the findings of the SWOT analysis, strategic initiatives with clearly defined goals and objectives were developed.  The final piece of evidence offered as demonstration of my understanding and mastery of this competency is the strategic plan in its entirety.  Sections of the strategic plan largely created by me include the mission and vision statements, the weaknesses and opportunities defined in the SWOT analysis, the strategic initiatives, and the needs assessment.  Additionally, I helped with defining the library’s organizational hierarchy, products and services, and user analysis, as well as the timeline, success measures, and outcomes provided in Appendix A.  This was a complicated assignment, particularly as I have never worked in a library, and it required a lot of research into the various components making up a long-range strategic plan.  I believe this document demonstrates my ability to participate in creating and carrying out such a plan.  Furthermore, it demonstrates my ability to work as part of a team as well as my ability to lead a team by demonstrating a good work ethic and a willingness to learn and incorporate ideas from my peers.

CONCLUSION

All organizations, including libraries, have a purpose which is advanced and enhanced through planning, management, marketing, and advocacy.  Planning involves developing objectives and goals that reflect the mission and vision of the library.  Management of a library or any of its departments is best carried out through incorporating a combination of management theories that creates an atmosphere of unity and appreciation which encourages employees to work towards carrying out the mission and vision of the library.  No matter how viable the programs and services of a library are, marketing is required to make the user community aware of what the library offers and why it benefits them to utilize those programs and services.  Advocacy helps ensure that the great services and programs offered by the library are noted by stakeholders who, in turn, ensure the continued funding of the library.  The discussion and evidence presented demonstrates my understanding and mastery of these concepts.

References

Auld, S. (2004). Good boss, bad boss: What makes a good supervisor, manager, director, or other type of leader? Public Libraries, 43(4), 206-211. Retrieved from Library Literature & Information Science Full Text (H.W. Wilson) database. (Accession No. 502931153)

Evans, G. E., & Ward, P. L. (2007). Management basics for information professionals (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Neal-Schuman.

Hirsch, S. (Ed.). (2015). Information services today. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.