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The new partnership is part of SLA’s initiative to support open government and public transparency on a global scale.

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During the summer months of June, July, and August vacation time is the next big to do item.  It is during vacation time that  information professionals may reflect on family, next steps of their professional career, and/or curl up with a nice book/ipad/e-reader.  Whether for personal or professional growth, books from a series or a particular author can provide another realm of reality which allow us to escape for a brief moments in time.

This month’s theme is books and authors.  So here are three simple questions to kick start a discussion:

1. What are you reading today? 
2. What format are you reading from, e.g. book, ipad, or e-reader?
3. Would you recommend it to others?

The Information and Knowledge Professional’s Career Handbook: Define and Create Your Success - Ulla de Stricker and Jill Hurst-Wahl, Chandos Publishing 2011

Sometimes, an idea floats around for a long time, looking for a hook into reality. I can’t count the number of years it occurred to me vaguely “all this advice colleagues ask for and receive ought to be written down for easy reference” as I went about my usual practice of speaking to student groups and reviewing resumes. Then it hit me: Why do it alone? Who else do I know who regularly has conversations with new career entrants and career changers? Hello, Jill? We each had some publisher contacts, and the process of pitching the proposal unfolded. I encourage others who walk around with a “book in the head” to seek out a collaborator – having a sounding board is priceless, and mutual reviews of text makes for a very clean manuscript going to the publisher.

The book can be seen as a “recording” of so much we have said and keep wanting to say in public speeches and seminars and in private conversations. It sets out a foundation on which our interactions with colleagues can be that much more productive because we can focus on the situational specifics. Moreover, it’s a manifesto allowing us to be frank about some convictions we built over decades of experience.

For me personally, the book in addition represented an opportunity to speak about the very individual nature of our work lives: I believe it is important to factor one’s innate strengths and preferences into any planning for a career, and I hope readers will feel encouraged to take into account how powerful it can be when we do so. Sure, the first and second job out of school may be happenstance … but we still have every opportunity to put conscious planning in the mix.

I am grateful to Chandos for the opportunity to publish the Handbook – and do allow me a plug: The entire process of working with Chandos was smooth and efficient beyond my wildest expectations. I am blown away by the professionalism of that team!

Jill and I will be signing copies of the book in booth 306 on Monday June 13 between 11:30 and 12:30 in the SLA exhibit hall – meet us there!

References:

Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/hetqpD

Kim Dority’s review at http://bit.ly/jklN69

Robyn Stockand’s review at http://bit.ly/iWLnAF

Interviews with Ulla and Jill by Dennie Heye: http://twaud.io/qKwQ  and  http://twaud.io/qQ79

AMAZON listing and reviews: http://amzn.to/e285mO

Availability in Europe: www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=2101&ChandosTitle=1

Being a mentor and coaching others can be accomplished through time  spent in person, by the phone, or even through writing.  In the book “The Information and Knowledge Professional’s Career Handbook: Define and Create Your Success.“,  Ulla de Stricker and Jill Hurst-Wahl offer their career knowledge  and personal compendium of advice as described in a blog post on the Infonista this past Sunday, May 15th.

Knowledge sharing is one of the noble functions information professionals are known for in the business world.  Ask yourself this question – Who are you sharing your knowledge with in a mentoring or coaching capacity?

Schumpeter references the April Harvard Business Review in this piece on the value of failure — as long as lessons are learned. Our success culture is discussed, with authors Tom Peters, Stephen Covey, and Malcolm Gladwell highlighted. Acknowledging failure, though, is an important step in business success. Executives at Ford Motor Company are used as an example of improvement following ownership of real issues.

http://www.economist.com/node/18557776?fsrc=nlw|mgt|04-20-11|management_thinking

The Jan-Feb 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review had an inset that resonates in my environment.

The optimal size of a decision-making group is 7. Deduct 10% effectiveness for each additional person. If you have more than 17 in your group, you are lucky if any decisions get made.

In LMD we are lucky since the true-decision making group is small and strong leaders guide us along. In my real life, not so good, but new additions and necessity are turning the tide on effectiveness.

- Patricia Cia

For any information professional interested in bringing the ideas of futures and trends to their workplace, this execuBook is worth a look. Author, Pero Micic, describes a model of seeing and understanding the future in The Five Futures Glasses: How to See and Understand More of the Future with the Eltville Model. 

Free access to execuBooks through aheadSpace is a benefit of your SLA membership. execuBooks are 15-minute summaries of business books published and delivered every week via email. execuBooks can be read on your computer in html or PDF versions and on your PDA, mobile or BlackBerry. You can sign up for your free subscription at http://www.sla.org/content/learn/members/execubooks/index.cfm

This book doesn't claim that the future is knowable, but it attempts to provide a framework for managing it. The author offers five techniques for viewing and addressing different aspects of the future: assumption analysis, surprise analysis, opportunity development, vision development and strategy development.

The summary provides "a way of thinking about the future to make it more easily understood. It will be of interest to business leaders and others with responsibility for planning and strategy."

For this book review I’m going to try something a little different. I’ll be posting a brief review and then providing a few discussion questions that won’t necessarily require you to have read the book itself. The idea is to stimulate a little more commenting and discussion in the comments. We’ll see how that works.

The book I’m writing about today is called Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/276865965). I was first turned onto this book by a few of the employees at my company who read it and suggested the library purchase a copy. Since we bought a copy it has been one of the books with the highest circulation numbers we have. So I figured I should give it a read despite my usual disdain for popular management books. I’ve got to say that I’m glad I picked it up.

The A3 Management Process is one of the main tools that Toyota uses to solve problems and facilitate lean management. A3 is simply the type of paper they would usually use to write their reports on, but the ideas behind the A3s go far beyond that. What they are intended to do is really get to the root sources of problems and to avoid jumping ahead to the first solution that comes to mind. The process can be broken down into about four or five main steps. The first step is what the book describes as “going to the gemba.” Gemba is a Japanese word meaning something like “real place.” Going to the gemba is the idea of becoming very familiar with the people involved in any particular issue and the work they do. Getting their input and understanding their view of what the problem is and how it might be resolved is integral the A3 process. Without going to the source and understanding all of the factors it is almost impossible to come up with an adequate solution. The second step in the A3 process is finding the root cause of a problem. This is sort of an extension of going to the gemba, but relates specifically to the problem at hand. This portion of the book introduces the idea of the “Five Whys” which is the notion that you need to continue to ask why something is happening until you get to the most basic cause of the problem. It may take more or less than five whys, but if you can continue to ask why about something more basic then you have not yet reached the root cause.

The next couple of steps deal more directly with providing solutions, or as the book prefers to call them “countermeasures.”  Solutions sound too final and those involved with A3 processes recognize that every countermeasure will provide its own set of problems to be worked on. In order to provide the best countermeasure(s) you need to use set-based decision-making. You must provide a range of possible countermeasures and work through them all with those people at the gemba to see what advantages and disadvantages exist with each of them. The A3 process also relies on Pull-Based Authority rather than assuming that those who are on the highest level of the command chain will make all of the decisions and that those at the lower levels will simply go along with those decisions. The idea is to talk through countermeasures until there is agreement and then get those who need to act to commit to seeing the process through. The A3 process promotes this by having those who take responsibility initial what they will do and when they will have it done.

The final step is to measure what the results of the countermeasure have been and determine if it is working. Even if it is mostly working that does not mean that additional problems have not arisen and may need to be dealt with. If, on the other hand, the countermeasure was not successful, then it is time to return to the beginning and see what else should be tried.

That is a brief summary of the contents of this book. What is most interesting about the way the book is designed is that it is set up to show managers and other people how to take others through the A3 process and encourage them to analyze problems and solutions in this way. The book is set up so that each chapter lets you look at the A3 process from the perspective of both a manager and his/her employee and see how the employee is encouraged to understand and use the process, while the manager gives the employee the room to make a few mistakes along the road to becoming a better A3 thinker.

All in all, Managing to Learn does a good job of explaining an interesting and useful management process while also showing how to put it into practice in the real world. The A3 process is shown to be a fairly scientific way in which to get at the root causes of problems and find viable solutions for them. I would say the book is definitely worth picking up.

Questions

1. Is the A3 process fundamentally at odds with the more recent internet/Web 2.0 idea of simply trying many things and seeing whether they work or not? Does it make more sense to do a detailed analysis and put forth a specific plan, or is it preferable to put a small amount of effort into many solutions and see which provides the best results?

2. The book examples of taking people through the A3 process all end in the near consensus of the employees involved and consensus is certainly a laudable goal. Do high levels of employee agreement seem realistic? Why or why not?

3. The A3 process places a high amount of importance on the thorough examination of problems and their solutions. This is somewhat at odds with the natural human impulse to find a quick answer and run with it, but could also lead to unnecessary stalling or foot dragging. Have you encountered either of these problems and/or do you have suggestions for avoiding them?

Alex Grigg

Those of us posting to the Reading Blog have been rather busy, as happens to most of us, so we’ve gone a little longer between posts than we originally intended. I’m just writing to draw everyone's attention to the fact that we have added a new title to the titles list. I will be doing a review and initiating a discussion of Managing to Learn within a week or two. That book has been heavily used by employees at my company because it gives a good overview of the A3 Management style and thought processes that have been so successfully used by Toyota and a growing number of other companies. Best of all for those of us who don't have a lot of extra reading time on our hands, it’s a relatively short book (138 pgs).

Pick up Managing to Learn now if you’d like to join in on the upcoming discussion!

In my post today I’m writing my review of Tribes by Seth Godin.  I’m going to start out with the things that I thought were most helpful and interesting about the book and then after that first paragraph I’m going to tell you why I wouldn’t bother picking it up if you haven’t already.  I know a lot of people liked the book so I expect some disagreement.  Feel free to use the comments section if you’d like to voice your own opinions, good or bad.

The main point of Godin’s book is that everyone is capable of being the leader of a tribe and that technology today makes it much easier to be one.  Being a leader also lets you make big, important, useful changes to the way things are done.  Tribes are basically just groups of people focused on a good idea, or a good new way of doing things.  Godin argues quite successfully that leaders aren’t just “the management,” instead leaders are the people who get a bunch of other people excited about an idea.  Those tribe members can come from anywhere, not just the people you happen to be above in the chain of command at your organization.  Godin gives dozens of examples of people who have been very successful at forming these kinds of tribes and who have accomplished some amazing things.  All of this is great.  It’s a little motivational speakerish, but it’s good to see that anyone should be capable of creating a movement and that those who create these movements can be very successful.  It is a good way of looking at the world.  Knowing you can make a difference, having a good idea, and speaking up and getting some people to agree with you is all it really takes.

One of my problems with the book, though, is that Godin doesn’t say much more than that.  He says what I said in that single paragraph over and over for 151 pages and gives some flashy examples.  They’re not even 151 long, weighty pages.  You can literally finish this book in an hour or two, depending on how fast you read.  Not that a good message in an easily digested package is a bad thing, but this message is overly simplistic and reads more like a pep talk rather than actual business advice.  Don’t get me wrong.  I understand the point Godin makes several times in the book, that he is not offering a step by step plan for success.  I have no problem with that.  One of the great faults I find with many business management books is that they provide step by step plans based on what happened to work once or twice in a couple of companies.  The problem here is that all Godin has done is removed the step by step plan from those types of books.  He is essentially showing us a few dozen successful tribes and then saying go be like them.  Godin doesn’t show us any tribes that were not successful in achieving their aims, nor does he give us much evidence to back up the vague things he does tell us.  In fact, he throws out some statements that are clearly untrue, or at least would require some explanation to be interpreted as true.  For example on pg. 36 he says “the best-selling books are always the surprise hits that come out of nowhere.”  Perhaps Godin had blocked out the increasing amount of frenzy during the subsequent releases of each Harry Potter book, but I have not.  Each one of the books in that seven book series sold more than the previous volume and there certainly was not much surprise at this fact.  You could perhaps argue that the success of the series as a whole was unexpected, but that’s not really saying the same thing.  In any case, that was just one statement that he may have exaggerated beyond reason and I could forgive him that.  My problem is more that the entire book is filled with statements like that and it is hard to know which ones are actually true.

One of the other annoying things about Tribes is that Godin acts as though everyone can be a leader all of the time.  He writes that “Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done,” but leadership “is about creating change that you believe in.” (13-14)  He goes on to say “Managers make widgets.  Leaders make change.” (14)  That may be true and I suppose his point is really that we need to allow the widget makers the chance to voice opinions and lead, but I’ve worked in factories that made widgets.  Those factories are not necessarily against change, but when your job is making widgets there aren’t all that many opportunities to propose earth shattering change.  I get the feeling while reading this book that it has been a long time since Godin had a job that was on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, if he ever had one at all.  Some of his other remarks about how management often works in big corporations seem equally off base.  He tends to makes it sound as though most of us are working in cubical farms under the lash of managers that accept no attempts by their underlings at change or improvement.  Even in the most poorly managed organizations that I’ve worked for I’ve never found that to be the case.  Managers tend to be just as willing to accept positive change as any normal person is.  This does partly support his main point that anybody can lead and form a tribe so it may be simply that his metaphorical “managers” are not meant to be taken literally.  Godin’s “managers” are completely separated from the leaders even though reality doesn’t really work that way.

My final complaint about the book is a small one.  If you’re already tired of hearing me whine about it, you won’t miss anything by skipping this last bit.  Feel free to move along to the comments if you wish.

Godin is far too optimistic about what kinds of things will start successful tribes.  He seems to be under the impression that only good ideas for positive change will be able to sprout new and fantastic tribes.  This is clearly not the case.  In fact, I would argue that the ideas that are most likely to start new tribes are the ones that simply fit the emotional needs of a group of people.  This is why conspiracy theories are always so popular and spread so fast.  Whenever a group of people really wants to believe something they have a hard time letting mere facts stand in their way.  The people who deny those facts often group together to form their own ill conceived tribes.  Think of the 9/11 truth movement, the Moon landing hoax supporters, or the holocaust deniers.  Those sorts of groups are gathering members to their tribes more and more easily.  Tribes can certainly also be the more positive groups that Godin uses as examples, but don’t forget that just because you’ve started a successful tribe and gained a group of supporters that it doesn’t necessarily mean you are right or that your change is good.

Alex Grigg