Stephen Abram discusses transformational leadership strategies for librarians. He talks about the importance of collaboration, speaking with one voice, and prioritizing initiatives for maximum impact. Abram notes that the Philippines is poised for growth and discusses how librarians can help support education, the economy, and quality of life. He emphasizes developing leadership skills through training programs and emphasizes qualities like passion, risk-taking, and flexibility.

1. Future Transformational Leadership
Strategies for Librarians
Stephen Abram, MLS
Manila, Philippines
October 24, 2014

2. 2
Transformational Leadership
• Leaders are nothing without followers. Seems simple but so much
harder to do than to say. Stephen Abram discusses the role of leaders
in the library movement, the role of collaboration, speaking with one
voice, and most importantly * choosing your priorities for impact *.
Stephen notes from his previous visit that the Philippines is on the
cusp of greatness as an emerging economy ideally situated to engage
with many countries globally. How do you build on your strengths?
How do we think long term? What role can librarians play to have a
solid impact on education, the economy, and quality of life for all?
What is the role of collaboration within libraries, between library
sectors and with government and other enterprises?

3. What is Leadership?
Leaders see an improvement to be
made – a desirable future state,
sometimes before others, and
actively seek to achieve those
improvements.

4. Who is a Leader?
Everyone can lead.
Leadership is different from
managing or supervising.

5. Lies we tell ourselves
• I’m not a leader
• Shyness versus introversion
• I don’t do presentations to management
• People will notice my good work
• They’ll read my report, memo . . .
• Leadership is someone else’s job
• I don’t make the decisions around here…
• That’s their responsibility – not mine
• Criticism in the absence of constructive criticism and critical thinking

6. Followership

7. 7
Future Driven, Scalable Leadership Training for Librarians
• Northern Exposure to Leadership Institute
• iSchool at Toronto e.g. Public Library Institute
• Crucial Conversations
• ALA Emerging Leaders
• Mountain Plains Leadership Institute
• Tall Texans
• Snowbird
• iSchool @ Toronto Symposia
▫ MOOCs, Makerspaces, New Measurements,
Crowdfunding…
• Etc.

8. Recent Research: PhD
Dissertations on Leadership in
Libraries
8
Mary-Jo Romaniuk, San Jose State Univ.
Cheryl Stenstrom, San Jose State Univ.
Donna Brockmeyer, Univ. of Saskatchewan, Thomas More College
Ken Haycock, Marshall School, University of California

9. 9
Research Insights into what Makes a Difference
• Passion is foremost
• Confidence next
• Influence not just Advocacy
• Risk Taking – in context
• Change Management
• Flexibility
• Dealing with Ambiguity – having the aptitude
to introduce change aligned with the future
state.
• Influencing Skills = selling ideas

10. 10
What doesn’t help or work
• Not taking the long view
• A dysfunctional view of time
• Being risk averse
• Playground competition
• Lack of cooperation
• Backbiting and blamestorming
• Fear of change or, indeed, fear at all
• Generally – ‘negativity’

11. 11
Big Picture Thinking by Leaders
• Giant Consortia
• CNSLP /Canadian Knowledge Research Network
• OCUL Scholars Portal
• OCLC Linked Data and DPLA Metadata Vaults
• …
• What does this require?
• Trust and Collaboration

12. SLA Alignment Research
12
• Key Highlights:
• True Relationships (not just contacts)
• Real Networks, Collaboration
• Consultation – based on authority, expertise,
quality and short conversations
• Speed – Save Time
• Packaging for Added Value Answers
• Educate and Train
• Understanding libraries/ians is an
underserved and regularly expressed need

13. Positioning the Library and
Librarian / Library Staff
Real professionals have names and reputations
What is your value proposition?
You versus the library versus the institution?
Why do you, the library, or your institution exist?

14. Librarian Magic

16. The Complex Value Proposition
Smelly
Yellow
Liquid
Or
Sex
Appeal?

17. SLA Alignment Research
Highlights:
• Relationships, Networks, Collaboration
• Speed – Save Time
• Packaging for Added Value Answers
• Educate and Train
17

18. Grocery Stores

19. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

20. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

21. Meals

22. Remaining Relevant and Having a Positive Impact

23. Up Your Game
• Know your local community demographics
• Focus on needs assessment and social assessments
• Outreach versus engagement and partnerships
• Prioritize: Love all, Serve all, Save the World means nothing
gets done
• Priorities are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, & Time bound
• Look for partnerships that add value

24. Up Your Game
• Mobile
• Content
• Merge with records management and archives
• Sensemaking

25. What are the real issues?
• Craft versus Industrial Strength
• Personal service only when there’s impact
• Pilot, Project, Initiative versus Portfolio Strategy
• Hand-knitted prototypes versus Production
• e.g. Information Literacy and Fluency initiatives
• Discovery versus Search versus Deep Search
• eLearning units and program dissemination
• Citation and information ethics
• Content and repository archipelagos
• Strategic Analytics
• Value & Impact Measures
• Behaviours, Satisfaction
• Economic and strategic alignment

26. Up Your Game
• Start offering diplomas and certificates
• The Non-credit Course
• Look for internal partnerships that add value
• Offer real educational opportunities not just adjacencies
• What courses to you offer or recommend? (TED, Khan
Academy, MOOCs, etc.)
• Play and connect yourself

27. Up Your Game
• Learn how to reach and teach online
• Teach how to learn online
• Teach how to research online
• Everyone in academic libraries should be focused on
teaching/researching first, then library
• Learn more systems than one!
• Be obsessive about consultation, recommendations and advice
• Social alignment rules and use the tools

28. Up Your Game
• Align with Collections – But add virtual experiences
• Start being Mobile in the extreme
• Look for partnerships that add value
• Focus on relationship management / liaisons
• Ensure the program delivery person is embedded including
librarians
• What are your top learning or research domains? Start there.
• Don’t go it alone. Build scalability and sustainability.
• Look for replicability – look for commonalities

29. The new
bibliography and
collection
development
Ask Us, KNOWLEDGE
PORTALS
KNOWLEDGE,
LEARNING,
INFORMATION &
RESEARCH
COMMONS

30. Up Your Game
• Take the strong ‘library’ brand and add dimension of “Librarian”
• Personal branding –Who are you and your team? Promote them.
• Program branding
• Take risks for attention (AIDA)
• Embed your brand beyond the library walls and virtually
• Go beyond the information brand to informing, creating, and social

31. Up Your Game
• Grow collections investments in strategic areas
• Develop hybrid strategies that are consistent and integrated for
digital and print and programs
• Be obsessive about consultation, recommendations and advice
• Integrate virtual and physical – hybridize
• Social alignment rules

32. Up Your Game
• OCLC Linked Data & APIs
• DPLA Vault & APIs
• 3D, learning object, LibGuides, audio, or streaming media repositories
• Understand Pedagogy in the context of student experiences and
educational goals
• Understand human development from teens to adult learning
• Understand the projects
• Makerspace… laboratories – onsite relevance
• Consider partnerships to put librarians into real liaison
• Consider coaches and tutoring partnerships

33. Up Your Game
• Embedded team member
• Embedded teacher
• Embedded research coach
• Embedded personal librarian
• Reintermediation

34. Up Your Game
• Dog, Star, Cow, Problem Child/?
• Reduce investment in successes – This isn’t a typo
• Increase investment in future successes – learn from failing
• Look at TCO - Do NOT value your own time at zero
• Look at all costs incurred and not just hard costs
• Review opportunity costs in soft costs

35. Entering the Knowledge Era
• Right answers/facts give way to consensus answers/informed
guesses
• Information combined with Insight rules
• Knowing where and how to look is infinitely more valuable than
knowing facts
• Knowledge is an immersion environment - an Information Ocean -
where are the maps that work here?

36. Five Laws of Library Science
• Books are for use.
• Books are for all; or, Every reader his book.
• Every book its reader.
• Save the time of the reader.
• A library is a growing organism.
S.R. Ranganathan

37. Five New Laws of Library Science
• Libraries serve humanity.
• Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated.
• Use technology intelligently to enhance service.
• Protect free access to knowledge.
• Honor the past and create the future.
Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman

38. Librarian Core Value Commitments
• Democracy
• Stewardship
• Service
• Intellectual Freedom
• Privacy
• Literacy and Learning
• Rationalism
• Equity of Access
• Building Harmony and Balance
 Michael Gorman, Library Journal, April 15, 2001
VALUES

39. To have the right staff
Get the right information
In the right format
To the right people
At the right time
To make the right decision
RIGHT

40. Leadership is People not Projects
• "Successful knowledge transfer involves neither computers nor
documents but rather interactions between people."
Tom Davenport
People like librarians, teachers, faculty,
counselors, therapists, social workers,
advisors, . . .

41. Taking The Knowledge Positioning
• Data >>>
• Transformations are:
• Applying standards
• SGML, HTML, Fields, Tags,
MARC, normalizing . . .
• Information >>>
• Transformations are:
• Representing data:
• Display, Chart, Format, Publish,
Aggregate, Picture, Graph, Sort,
Rank, Highlight, etc.

42. Taking The Knowledge Positioning
Data >>> Information >>> Knowledge >
Apply
standards
Tangible
Representations
of Data
Learning
Knowing
Filtering
Evaluating
Balancing

43. Knowledge is not the path to:
WISDOM

44. Taking The Knowledge Positioning
• Behaviour
• Decisions that result in action, even if that action is non-action
• Key success factors are intelligent, informed and impactful results
• Has value in proportion to its results in the context of the individual or
social organization
• Measure behavioural impact – don’t just collect statistics.

45. Taking The Knowledge Positioning
Data
====>
Information
=======>
Knowledge
======>
Behaviour
======>
 Apply
Stand-ards
 Store
&
Move
 Display
 Chart
 Graph
 Publish
 Picture
 Format
 Knowing
 Learning
 Filtering
 Evaluating
Gerunds
 Do
 Decide
 Choose
 Apply
 Enact
 Action
Verbs

46. Transformational Process
•Data
• Information
•Knowledge
•Behaviour
•Norm
•Form
•Transform
•Perform
Success

48. What Favours Rapid Adoption?
• Relative Advantage
• Compatibility
• Complexity
• Trialability
• Observability

49. What kind of librarian are you? Critical thinker or Criticizer?
What is your library culture around change or innovation?

50. Leaders have many modes.
They choose to use the personal behaviour that
works in the situation.
Be 3D or 6D, but not 1D

51. "An optimist is someone who says a glass is half full. A pessimist says
it's half empty. A leader might say, "Looks like we've got twice as
much glass as we need. Let discuss it."

53. Are you on the ‘hits’ train?

54. DATA

55. QUALITATIVE INFORMATION
and
QUANTITATIVE DATA

56. STATISTICS
versus
MEASUREMENTS

57. Are you locked into a
traditional library mindset?

58. What about value and impact?

59. Exercise your mind about the rhythms of your
work. . .
59

60. Or shall we stick with this?

61. Focus and Understand on the Whole
Experience

62. Analytics

63. Conclusion: 28 Key Tips
 Good not Perfect
 It’s not the steps that cause delays in development - it’s the space
between the steps
 No mistake is ever final.
 Freeze and Go! The right metaphor is seasonal change - not revolution or
evolution
 Prefer action over study: If you’re studying something to death -
remember that death was not the original goal!

64. Conclusion: 28 Key Tips
 Mock-Up, Build, Rebuild, Beta, Pilot, Launch, Re-Do
 Remember the rule of six (6). You get very diminishing returns after
asking the same question of like people.
 Remember the 15% rule: Humans have extreme difficulty in actually
seeing a difference of less than 15%.

65. Conclusion: 28 Key Tips
 Use the 70/30 rule: “I agree with 70% and can live with the other
30%.”
 Remember the old 80/20 rule standby: No matter how few or many
users you have, 80% of your usage/revenue/etc. will come from 20%
of your users.
 Remember the 90/10 rule. 90% of your costs are in implementation,
not development.

66. Conclusion: 28 Key Tips
 “Productize”: Be able to physically point at your product or service.
 Get out of your box! It is unlikely that you are the alpha user profile.
 You can’t step in the same river twice. Your knowledge of the new
development means you probably cannot see the potential pitfalls.

67. Conclusion: 28 Key Tips
 Understand the differences between features, functions and benefits.
 Understand your customer and don’t assume - TEST.
 Don’t just ask your clients what they do, will do or want. OBSERVE
them.
 Have a vision and dream BIG!

68. Conclusion: 28 Key Tips
 Ask the three magic questions:
What keeps you awake at night?
If you could solve only one problem at work, what would it be?
If you could change one thing and one thing only, what would it be?
 Never underestimate the user – especially students.
 Seek the real user.

69. Conclusion: 28 Key Tips
 Respect information literacy, learning styles and multiple intelligence.
 Understand the adoption curve.
 Do research for yourself too. Set up alerts on your hot issues.
 Bring management on side first, then customers and users, BEFORE
you launch.

70. Conclusion: 28 Key Tips
 Feedback is a gift - you can keep it, return it, hide it in the closet.
Don’t overvalue one piece of out-of-context feedback or let it loom out
of perspective and balance.
 Measure - don’t just count: Decision-makers CANNOT interpret your
statistics.
 When you have 100 options to choose from the critical skill isn’t
choosing 5 but sacrificing 95.

83. The Library as Sandbox

84. Being Open to Ambiguity
Be the Change We Want to See

85. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
Consultant, Lighthouse Consulting
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@gmail.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
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