Congratulations to our newly elected LMD Board members who will take office on January 1, 2012:

• Chair-elect: Amy Affelt;
• Treasurer: Doris Helfer.

Thanks to everyone who voted.

As a new information professional, I’ve been asked “How do you develop or gain leadership skills when you’re not in a leadership position?” As Donald H. McGannon said, “Leadership is action, not position.” It’s about what you do.

There are many opportunities to lead without title. Here are some of my experiences and suggestions:

1. Get involved with planning and coordinating events. 
It can be an existing event or something new. Two colleagues and I put together the Library Workers’ Skill Share event last year.

2. Take on a leadership role in an association like SLA on student, local and national levels. 
I was involved with SLA@Pratt, a student chapter of SLA and am currently serving as the SLA DBIO Medical Section Chair.

3. Propose ideas and take the lead on them.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be the workplace. It can be internships, volunteer positions, proposal for a conference program or poster session, etc. I have pitched ideas and worked on various projects (unconferences, pilot of a reference service model, etc.) in the past few years.

I’ve had the opportunity to facilitate roundtable discussions on the topic of leadership. Below are links to the handouts. I hope they’re sources of inspiration and ideas.

• Changing Stewardship: What can different generations of librarians teach each other?
• Being An Audacious Leader When Introducing Change

Henry Mintzberg said, “Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.” So go ahead, dive in and lead.

What are your tips and suggestions for leadership development?

Lisa Chow is a 2011 SLA Rising Star and the current DBIO Medical Section Chair. She blogs at People Interact about usability, user experience, unconferences, interactions and all things people. Find out more at http://bit.ly/lisachow. 

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

Leadership as a concept is often misunderstood.  This is the case not only in libraries but, in all situations.  People often equate leadership with power, a huge mistake and probably the worst you can make. 

For those of you who know me, you know that by profession I am an academic library director and that my other passion is natural horsemanship.  I am always seeking never ending self improvement, especially in leadership, in all areas of my life. My study of leadership easily crosses over from professional librarian to horse woman (and back again) but, the concepts are really the same! I have often taken pieces of knowledge from both areas of my life and found that the concepts were easily applied. It is interesting when one tries to understand and communicate with horses that this relationship transcends on how we interact with humans in all kinds of situations as well. I guess I'd like to believe that if I (a predator) can successfully communicate and partner with a horse (a prey animal), that I can just as successfully find a way to communicate and lead those working for me. 

I participate in leadership seminars and courses all of the time too and as I mentioned, I strive for continual improvement in all aspects of my life, a life-long project I suppose, and a truly good use of my time. Currently, I am using the FISH! Philosophy with my faculty and staff (and doing a self-study, Leader Fish for myself). It is fun! And, they seem encouraged, interested, and enjoying it–and it truly compliments my professional life and horse journey. The whole idea stems around four principles: Be There, Play, Make Their Day, Choose Your Attitude!

Rather than rewrite what I've written before about leadership, replacing the word "horse" with "person" – or something like that, I'd like to take the approach of just directing you to a blog post I wrote back in December 2009 on my personal blog, Natural Horse Lover called, Leadership with Our Horses  and be sure to watch the video if you'd like a good laugh. (Please note, that if you search the blog, there is a lot more on the blog about leadership and other topics that transcend horsemanship if you want to read more.)  

I challenge you to consider some of these ideas and morph your own ideas about leadership into something that is not just another power struggle between people (horses or whatever else in your life) but something that helps develop a positive partnership that fosters success, with a great leader at the helm. This is the place where one's dignity remains in tact, everyone is productive, and true leadership shines.  

The actual title is Tablet Computers: Enterprise Solutions for Information Professionals. LOL, just got a copy of the article from ProQuest.  So, the posting of the title is incorrect at:

http://www.infotoday.com/online/jan11/index.shtml

However, they did get it right in the magazine.

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

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

Often, Librarians and Info Pros are initially hired to fill supportive roles and over time in tough economic climates their roles are perceived by some as less than a critical part of the core competences necessary for the operation of the business.  In fact, in many cases the information departments are identified as a disposable cost centers and not a vital component of the decision making process that can ultimately lead to informative discussions that generate the revenue needed for the business to function. Info Pros must change this perception.  Librarians must find ways to involve themselves with projects, products, and plans that not only extend their employment but also have a positive effect on the company’s bottom line.  As professionals, we need to make every effort to make a maximum impact within the organization as the success of the business is to some degree a reflection of our careers.  It is important to remember the positive impact that Librarians are able to make now leaves a blueprint to success for generations of library professionals and Info Pros to come. Whether it is in line with generating revenue or preventing the loss of it, Info Pros need to continually reinventing their role and effectively align themselves with the primary objectives of their organizations.

Some thoughts for your week…

If you are unfamiliar with Slideshare.net, which is where I found this slideshow, you should investigate it. Many people place there presentations in Slideshare so that they receive a broader exposure. Some also use Slideshare as a place for presentation attendees to see slides again, rather than giving people handouts.