Presentation summary of The Seattle Public Library's Strategic Plan Preparing Team's final report on fostering an organizational culture of innovation.

1. Strategic Plan Preparing Team
Imagine
Test Suggest
Innovate
Decide Develop
Final Report

2. SPPrT Members
• Jim Loter, LLT Sponsor • Jennifer Reichert
• Eve Sternberg, Facilitator • Jennifer Robinson
• Jennifer Bisson • Sarah Scott
• Kirk Blankenship • Daniel Tilton
• Daria Cal • Caroline Ullmann
• Lynn Miller • Nonie Xue

3. Key Questions
• How do we animate the Strategic Plan?
• How does staff get heard?
• How do we capture and cultivate good ideas?

4. Guiding Strategic Goal
Foster an organizational culture of
innovation

5. Innovation
The action of finding ways to use our
resources more efficiently and
effectively to create greater value for
our patrons.

6. Culture
Shared basic assumptions that a
group learned as it solved its
problems and that have worked well
enough to be considered the correct
way to perceive, think, and feel in
relation to those problems.
Schein, Edgar H. Organizational Culture and Leadership. (paraphrase)

7. Levels of Culture
• Dress codes, furniture and offices
Artifacts • Visible organizational structures and processes
Espoused • Strategic goals
• Mission
Values • Organizational Values
Basic • Unspoken rules
• Unconscious beliefs
Assumptions • Things taken for granted
Schein, Edgar H. Organizational Culture and Leadership.

8. Staff Input Sessions
• Information Technology • Mid-City West Region
• Central Assistant Managers Librarians
• Mid-City East Region • NE and NW Region
Librarians Librarians (combined)
• Safety and Security • Shelving Operations
• Reference Services • SE/SW Region Librarians
• Borrower Services • Central public service
• Branch Assistant Managers Librarians
• Branch Library Associates • Facilities, Maintenance and
and Student Assts. Materials Distribution Unit
Managers

9. “Taking the Pulse of Innovation” Survey
90%
80%
80%
70% 65%
60% 53%
50%
N=254
40% 32%
30% 21% Agree
20% Disagree
10% 2%
0%
I have had ideas to I understand who Sufficient
improve some aspect makes decisions in opportunities exist in
of library services or my department the workplace to
workplace processes discuss ideas with co-
workers

10. “Taking the Pulse of Innovation” Survey
70%
60% 58%
55%
50%
40%
30% Agree
19% 21%
20% Disagree
10%
0%
I understand who makes I understand how proposals for
decisions in departments other improving services are evaluated
my their own outside of my department
N=254

11. Key Findings from Staff Input
• Clarify How We Make Choices
– Communicate Big Picture Priorities
– Enumerate Key Considerations
– Train and Coach Staff and Managers in Proposal
Development and Evaluation
• Clarify Who Makes Decisions
– Define a Decision-making Roadmap
– Decentralize and Fast-track Decision-making
– Proposal status check
– Create a Suggestion Box
– Rebuild Trust

12. Key Findings from Staff Input
• Encourage Innovative Thinking
– Respond Constructively to Staff Ideas
– Provide Opportunities for Creative Collaboration
• Encourage Idea Proposers to Help Implement
• Take risks and Encourage Experimentation
– Grant License to Experiment
– Review Policies for Strategic Flexibility

13. Key Findings from Staff Input
• Listen to Front-line, Customer-focused Input
– Tap Frontline Staff Insights
– Evaluate Success
• Invest for Innovation
– Make the Time
– Train for Innovation
– Fund for Innovation
– Stabilize the Organization

14. Key Findings from Staff Input
• Highlight Innovation Efforts
– Build Innovation into Work Plans
– Recognize and Highlight Innovation

15. Recommendations
Imagine Suggest Develop Decide Test Innovate

16. Imagine
• Inspire Imagination in the Workplace
– Use time at regular meetings to discuss ideas and
opportunities
• Provide learning, networking, skill-building
opportunities
– Train supervisors and managers on inspiring
imagination
– Encourage and support participation in conferences.
– Initiate opportunities for learning outside the library

17. Suggest
• Define the Roles and Responsibilities of Staff
in an Innovative Organization
– Use personal work plans to define expectations
around innovation and experimentation
• Accept Ideas and Suggestions from All Staff on
Any Topic
– Support staff to pilot small-scale innovations
– Develop an “INbox” for ideas on InfoNET

18. Develop
• Establish a Team to Support Development of
Innovative Ideas
• Seek resources to support innovation
– Develop funding source for time to develop ideas
– Develop sustainable “innovation fund”
• Clarify Key Components and Characteristics of
Proposals
– Use common framework to develop and evaluate
proposals

19. The Team
• Innovation Ombudsman
– Represent the ideas of Library staff
– Work with staff to help investigate and develop those ideas
– Help staff gain access to appropriate Library decision-makers
• Innovation Champions
– Conduct and promote activities to inspire imagination and
innovation
– Communicate energetically about creative efforts underway
• Innovation Advisors
– Develop and steward a process for staff to submit ideas, collect
feedback, and develop ideas into proposals
– Assist staff with developing proposals
– Endorse and promote recommendations to Library decision-
makers

20. Decide
• Use an “Ideas Framework” of common principles
to guide evaluation and decision-making
• Clarify routine decision-making authority
– Task LLT and managers to define decision-making roles
and responsibilities at all levels
• Improve Organizational Communication
– Make active listening a core competency
– Encourage informal communications across unit and
division lines

21. Test
• Encourage all managers and teams to
experiment and pilot low-cost/low-risk
projects
• Define evaluation criteria and cost estimates
prior to launching projects

22. Next Steps
• Engage key management teams in working together to
support imagination, collaboration, experimentation
and innovation
• Develop and pilot the InfoNET INbox
• Establish a team to support development of innovative
ideas and promote use of the ideas framework
• Work to identify, create, and pilot resource options
• Develop and lead an approach to engage the All
Managers group in defining organizational decision-
making roles and responsibilities
• Develop and pilot high priority training and
professional development opportunities