Many people have traveled to Louisville, KY for the SLA Leadership Summit.  You can read notes from the conference here, here and here.  This evening, approximately 20 – 25 people gathered for a Leadership & Management Division Brainstorming Session led by Ulla de Stricker (Immediate Past Chair).  Approximately six people were not members of LMD.  Why brainstorm?  It was felt that broader input was needed in order to think about how to position the Division, what benefits it should provide, and how it should communicate with its members.  Here are some thoughts that stood out to me from the session:

• We need to communicate better that you do not need to be in a leadership or management position in order to join this Division.  Several people noted that they joined the Division in order to learn about management issues before becoming a manager.
• LMD is not a subject-focus division, but a division that should be able to meet many member needs, since a high percentage of our members are in leadership or management positions, OR aspire to be in those type of positions. 
• Communicating with Division members — as well as other members of SLA — needs to take many forms, including using social networking tools.
• LMD’s three sections need better visibility.  What are the sections?
  • Consulting — Members of the Consulting Section represent
    services such as information brokering, strategy consulting and technical
    consulting. This includes consultants within an organization, and those serving
    external clients.
  • Marketing –The Marketing Section of the Leadership & Management Division was established to provide a forum for the exchange
    of ideas and information regarding marketing theory and how to effectively
    market information services.
  • Content Buying — The Content Buying Section of  Leadership & Management Division includes buyers and sellers involved in the many aspects related to managing enterprise-wide content, such as supplier relationship management, contract negotiations, budgeting and funding of licenses, training and communications, risk management, and measuring and maximizing an enterprise’s return on the investment in content licenses.
• LMD is the fourth largest division (still) after giving birth to both the Competitive Intelligence and Knowledge Management Divisions.  The Division is financially sound.
• LMD’s programs at the Annual Conference are well received.

I look forward to the actions that are considered based on today’s discussion.  However, I honestly believe that just having the discussion helped to move the Division forward.

At a Library of Congress event earlier this year, Andy Hines — a futurist and director of consulting at the consulting firm Social Technologies — said that libraries:

are facing the greatest transformation in your industry, perhaps since the fourth century when Alexander the Great founded the Royal Library of Alexandria.

At that session, he taught librarians to use "the futures wheel", which is a tool that enables groups to
visualize a problem and logically think through possible solutions.

Start with the challenge, then think how that impacts your industry, your organization, and finally, you consider the things you absolutely must attend to. Then consider the events and changes that may not happen, but which would be important if they did, and come up with a Plan B, just in case.

Let’s hope that he teaches us tools from his toolbox at the Leadership Summit in January 2008.  I’m sure we would all like help in understanding the challenges that we face.