How many librarians does it take to change a light bulb?
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A lighthearted but informative look at introducing, implementing, and institutionalizing change in libraries. Based loosely on the work of John Kotter.
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How many librarians does it take to change a light bulb?
- 1. A presentation by GEORGE NEEDHAM for SEFLIN May 22, 2015
- 2. What do you think? How many librarians does it take? • Three. One to change the bulb and two to reminisce about how good the old bulb was. • Two. One to change the bulb and one to send the old bulb to the remote storage facility. • Just one. But she has to have an MLS. • “Change?”
- 3. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin
- 4. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Change
- 7. But the stakes are high
- 11. So how do we get started?
- 14. Communicate
- 19. Help others see the issue
- 20. Aim for the heart
- 21. Weave a vision of the future
- 22. Clarify roles
- 24. Don’t sweat the small stuff
- 25. Celebrate short-term wins “If we magnified blessings as much as we magnify disappointments, we would all be much happier.” John Wooden
- 27. Build on your successes
- 28. Learn from your failures
- 29. Keep your eye on the ball
- 30. An aside: Avoid “Schadenfreude”
- 31. Don’t let up
- 32. Embed the change in the culture
- 33. The poster boy for culture change
- 34. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Peter Drucker
- 35. Four vital elements for followers • Trust • Compassion • Stability • Hope Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie (Gallup Press, 2008)
- 38. Dealing with the naysayers
- 39. “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” John F. Kennedy
- 41. Thanks and stay in touch! George Needham / www.georgeneedham.net / georgeneedham@yahoo.com
Editor's Notes
- After the joke: By the way, I only have two bullet point lists in this presentation, and the other one doesn’t show up until slide #35!
- Don’t blame Charles Darwin for the phrase “survival of the fittest.” That was Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase after reading an early edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things. Douglas Adams Also known in library circles as “The Rule of 1965,” as promulgated about 15 years ago by Karen Hyman (American Libraries, v30 n9 p54, 56-58 Oct 1999)
- We all like the noun “change.” The active verb “to change” we’re a little less enthusiastic about!
- The result of any change process is that someone or something becomes different. This is scary. When we go into a change process, we don’t know exactly how it will turn out. Will we like the results? Will I be competent in the new environment? How will I fit in?
- “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” W. Edwards Deming
- In his First Law of Motion, Sir Isaac Newton described the principle of inertia: an object not subject to an external force moves at a constant velocity. (We frequently simplify this by saying “Bodies in motion tend to remain in motion; bodies at rest tend to remain at rest.”) Think of change as the external force that disrupts that constant velocity. Who wants to be knocked out of their nice, steady pace? Some people enjoy the challenge of reconceptualizing work, just for the thrill of achieving different results. Some people approach change with a wariness, characterized by a skeptical wait-and-see attitude. Some people adopt a “wait-and-wait” attitude, claiming, “I’ve been through every other scheme that’s come down the pike, I can survive this one, too.” Still others actively resist change, fearing harm to the organization, a loss of personal prestige or sense of competence, or, rarely, pure malice or laziness. When these different styles come into contact, friction and conflict are likely.
- Of course, a good cartoon from The New Yorker can sum it up much better than I can. So, if we think the books and everything we have built around them may be morphing into museum pieces like the scrolls have, what next?
- One of the few business writers I really enjoy reading is John Kotter, and I strongly recommend that you read Our Iceberg Is Melting. This very simple book introduces his eight step change process. He also wrote a much longer, more technical work, titled Leading Change, which gives the academic and business rationale for what he simplifies here. Here’s the story of Our Iceberg Is Melting, very briefly: A young penguin discovers that the iceberg on which his colony lives is slowly melting. He brings his discovery to the elders, who are very dubious, and react in ways you might find familiar. Knowing he’s right, the young penguin develops a plan to convince the elders that the iceberg is melting, and then, a plan of how to move, and thereby save, the colony. I think the whole foundation on which we have based libraries is the iceberg that’s melting. Discuss the value proposition
- Thanks to Photoshop, no turtles were hurt in the making of this slide!
- Disrespecting the past: criticizing past choices or colleagues, making fun of the way that things are done today, claiming a whole new approach or a break with the past. So if that’s the fatal error, what are the helpful steps?
- The purpose of the timeline exercise is to put any change into context, to show how change has happened throughout a recognizable, defined period of time, that we have implemented and internalized those changes, and that we can do more.
- When I was trying to find an image for this page, I was going to use pictures of some of the great communicators: Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Gloria Steinem…then I realized I was setting the bar way too high. None of us could write a speech like “I have a dream,” or “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself…” But all of us can use a few simple techniques to become better at communicating.
- PCLS example Constant reinforcement
- If people are talking a good game, but they aren’t behaving in a way that aligns with their talk, everyone around them will notice the discrepancy. How a change is introduced, how it is implemented, and whether or not it becomes part of the culture of the organization are all points at which the rhetoric may not match the action. An example is the way self-check machines are introduced in libraries. If there is sincere staff buy in for offering self-check, the machines will be placed so that customers can see them easily, can use them with all types of materials, and can use them without being forced to walk a gauntlet of staff to get to them. If the staff is lukewarm or actively opposed to the concept, the machines will end up in inconvenient locations with numerous restrictions on their use, and the staff won’t deign to use them, even for folks who would prefer autonomy and privacy in making their library selections. One caveat: All too often, when people say that there isn’t enough communication in a change process, what they are really saying is that they don’t like the message that is being communicated. Don’t let this knock you off track.
- Overselling. It’s a safe bet that your change will not revolutionize library service as we know it. Make sure that you describe the impact of your change accurately and without hyperbole. You want to aim big and create a vision that inspires people, while being realistic in the impact that people can expect. Overselling a change can also create problems if people think the change is going to be so massive that they won’t be able to manage it. Under-communicating. If you are starting to get sick and tired of communicating your vision, that’s probably a good sign that it is just starting to penetrate the consciousness of the people you are attempting to reach. The CEO of a leading library organization was notorious for trying to get his staff to change their marketing messages to the point where he got bored talking about them in his speeches. Eventually he came to realize that his message wasn’t getting through until he could hear staff using some of his key phrases in their conversations with him. A second problem with insufficient communication is that in the absence of real information, people will frequently jump to the worst case scenario. The echo chamber. It’s really easy, and quite reassuring, to talk only to the people who support you when you are trying to introduce change. This echo chamber effect (so prevalent in political discourse in this country today) results in a skewed picture of your process. To get an accurate picture of the process, you need to make time to talk to your doubters. This doesn’t mean that you should spend all your time with the whiners who can only see the dark lining of every silver cloud. But people who have contrary ideas, who may have experienced failed change attempts, and don’t want to slog through that quagmire again, can keep you from stepping into unnecessary bear traps. If you haven’t read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about the Lincoln cabinet, Team of Rivals, I would strongly recommend it as a management text!
- Both Steven Covey and “The Prayer of St. Francis” make this point: “Grant that I may not so much seek to…be understood, as to understand.” What does your listener or your audience need to hear from you? How can you use the words and phrases that make sense in the context in which that person is working or living?
- Help other people see the need for change and the importance of moving quickly and decisively. Lay out the situation. Listen to how people react. If the change is serious enough, you could point out the threat to the institution (and to the people who work in the institution) that will result from not acting.
- You need to connect the change you want to implement with the deepest values of the organization. You need the hard data and the solid rationale for acting, but you also need to tie your new ideas to the culture and history of your organization, to its own self-image.
- Without a clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish, a vision can dissolve into a whole lot of activity without any focus. The director of a library with which I briefly worked had a vision for her institution that included a busy agenda of interesting programs that would attract adults, especially younger adults. By the time this had been communicated to front line staff, the vision had been translated into a requirement to offer so many programs per month per location. Two young branch assistants said in a meeting that the programs they were scheduling were so boring that even they wouldn’t have attended, if they weren’t working for the library. Somehow, that vision of attractive, interesting programs had transmogrified into a checklist that actually worked against the vision. By the way, there’s a reason I used a picture of The Jetsons here, rather than one of the more current visions of the future. Most current movie and TV visions of the future are very dystopian, and you want to present an upbeat and positive version of your change, not a “Twilight” or “Hunger Games” version, right?
- The great Chicago columnist Mike Royko used to say that the motto of Chicago should be, “What’s in it for me?” He said this cynically, about everyone having their hand out, no matter how high-minded a project might be. But it can also be a positive, in the sense that people will be more willing to make changes if they understand the reasons, and especially if they see how they fit in. This is another place where change can really stumble: if people have to guess what their roles will be after the change has been implemented, they will more than likely default to the worst possible scenario. If you are the person recommending or implementing the change, one of your responsibilities as you set out your vision is to help people understand how they fit into the new world. If you don’t know, or if people have to guess where they fit in, there is still work to do. If you are one of the people who are having your work changed, you need to ask what your role will be.
- Two kinds of barriers: mental and physical. When the barrier is in the person’s head, one way to remove it is by demonstrating that the change can be implemented without fatal damage to either the employee or the institution. Showing other institutions that have tried the same technique or process can convince some people. Other people benefit from good analogies, those that help them understand what this change could be compared to. “This new self checkout is like the self check line at Kroger,” for example. Recognizing and honoring people within your institution who have had success with the change can also be reassuring to more reticent colleagues. When the barriers are tangible, you have an obligation to identify and remove them. In many cases, the barriers are in organizational structure. Work rules, bureaucracy, library traditions, appraisal systems, and slavish devotion to a strategic plan can stymie even the best ideas. If the leaders within your organization are sufficiently motivated and powerful, obstacles can disappear fairly quickly. If your barrier is an individual, you have a different sort of problem. You won’t be able to do everything: there are still only 24 hours in the day, you aren’t a psychologist, and unlimited resources are granted to very few of us. An honest attempt to make it possible for your colleagues to do their jobs successfully in the new system will go a long way to making change more palatable.
- Focus on the goals, not the techniques The difference between principles, outcomes and techniques
- Before you even begin any implementation activity, identify the quick wins, the situations or locations where your change is likely to be readily accepted, implemented and successful. When someone scores a success, make sure that everyone associated with the change hears about it. I would never suggest that one should stretch the truth in any way when celebrating these wins. However, it makes sense to use the facts and the numbers to your best advantage when discussing these wins. A library organization with which I’m familiar does a bi-annual employee opinion survey. Even though changes were introduced based on the findings of this survey, no one in Human Resources or senior management ever connected the staff opinions expressed in the survey to the changes. This caused a great deal of unnecessary cynicism about the survey among staff members.
- These are your role models. Make sure other people hear about what they’ve done. While it’s important to identify those early wins and short term gains, it’s just as important not to declare victory prematurely. (Is it necessary to remind anyone of President Bush’s ill-timed “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier?) Change is a process, so a final “victory” is probably not a reality. You can pause and reflect on the victories won along the way, but to declare the victory is presumptuous. Until the change is fully rooted in the culture, it is still fragile.
- Share the wealth of success Feature your role models
- Don’t run away and hide when things don’t go right. Be forthright and own up to what goes wrong, but LEARN from it! Need an organizational culture that supports this. YOU have to support it within your organization. Fail fast, fail often
- Losing focus is easy after a few successes. It’s also when the people who didn’t want to do this in the first place will start saying you’ve gone “far enough.”
- Schadenfreude: Taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others.
- “Dripping water hollows out a stone, not through force, but through persistence.” Ovid Press harder and faster after the first successes, but don’t think the job is over because you have a few wins. Persistence is vital in change management.
- Embed the change in the structure to make it last. You know that the change has been embedded in the career like this: You decide to do something to update the change, and the people who were the most vehemently opposed to that change start complaining that they want to keep the first change!
- No one did this better than Steve Jobs. He changed the culture in any number of ways, much as how we perceive the human-technology interface, how we think about product design, how we buy music. But why is this important?
- Because no matter how good your strategy is, the culture of your organization or your community will always prevail. You can try changing the culture, but unless you are Steve Jobs reincarnated, it’s probably a little more than you want to take on. BTW, this quote is attributed to Peter Drucker. That may be apocryphal.
- From work of Gallup Institute on strengths based leadership: If you want to lead a change, your followers need a few basic reassurances. Trust – basic honesty Compassion – need to believe one’s superiors actually care about individuals affected Stability – not of practice but of values Hope – that there is a reason for what’s happening, and that the reason is important and valued
- To wrap up, I have two interconnected secrets to share, secrets that everyone who ever tries to introduce change anywhere needs to internalize.
- The first part of the secret is that you don’t need everyone on board to succeed. This is Everett Rogers’ diffusion of technology graph. At the left side, you have the innovators, the bleeding edge adopters, the folks who actively strive to be at the front of any new idea or innovations. They might make up 2.5% of your population. Next come the people who are early adopters, the leading edge folks. They don’t want to be part of the beta test of your idea, but once it has some traction, they will be right behind the bleeding edge in adopting the change. If your institution tracks with Rogers’, about 13% of your population will fall into this group. Now we enter the biggest part of the curve, the people who want to wait and see. They want to wait until the first two groups have worked out all the kinks, and see that the change had good effects. These people wish you well and want to see the change succeed, but they aren’t going to lead it. Some will jump in earlier, some later, but they will come along. Adding both groups, in most situations, this will be roughly 65% of your population. Trailing these people is what Rogers calls the laggards. These are the “Doubting Thomases,” the ones who have to see the change succeed over and over again before they will be convinced. They have a hundred reasons why it could still fail, and they don’t want any part of the change until something newer is introduced, at which point your change will suddenly look like the good old days. These folks might account for 15% of your colleagues. Rogers does not make a case for people who resist change with every fiber of their beings, a group we see all too often in libraries. I call these the dead-enders. These people will fight any change with every bit of their strength, and will resent you for even suggesting the change. If this group exceeds 5% of your total population, you’ve drawn a very bad card. Now here’s the part that people slip on: you don’t need all these people to support the change. You need a critical mass, and that’s all. You need the bleeding edge and leading edge people to help you get the change up and running. And you need to be able to bring a solid majority of the “wait and see” group along through the launch techniques we just discussed. An inordinate amount of time is spent by librarians frustratingly trying to bring along the resisters and the dead-enders, as if their support is absolutely required for success. Get enough people moving in the same direction and you can move mountains. But if you stop to try to get everyone on board, you will never get anywhere.
- Secondly, in every institution, there seems to be at least one or two staff members who are considered the naysayers. They may cloak their opposition to everything by claiming they are playing devil’s advocate, or they may push to see if you’ve considered this exception or that, but the undercurrent of their comments is always one of criticism or cynicism. At this point, you can take one of two tacks. You could just say, “Well, that’s just Mary, that’s how she always behaves.” This may be true, but it’s not particularly productive. Joan Frye Williams and I developed a different approach. We suggest that you take Mary’s concerns seriously by using a technique called, “How can we…?” Let’s say Mary says, “We tried e-content in 2005, and no one wanted it.” or “Why should we spend all this money on eBooks when the technology isn’t consistent?” or “The board will hate this.” You might be tempted to say, “It’s not 2005 anymore, lots of people have e-readers now.” Instead, try saying, “Good point! How can we re-introduce e-content so that it doesn’t land with a thud, like it did in 2005?” “How can we select the most popular eBook format or two and run with that?” “How can we introduce this technology so that the board will see its value?” The point of this is to recognize and acknowledge the critic’s point, and turn it from an obstacle into a design point, and then design the change so it addresses the criticism. And if you hit a criticism you can’t design around, you may need to do some additional work on your idea. Yet another approach is to use objections as building blocks, by using the technique stolen from theatrical improvisation, known as “Yes, and…” When someone disagrees or points up a perceived flaw in your idea, instead of opening with “But..” or “However…” try opening with “Yes, and…” then making your point. This is another way to validate the person’s concerns without letting them stop the progress on the ideas. If Mary hits you with the “How can we select one format of e-content?” objection, you might respond, “Yes, there are a lot of formats, so let’s do the research to identify the most popular or the ones that can be used across multiple platforms.” If these techniques don’t work, and if you have someone who absolutely will not get on board with the change, you need to level with them. You need to say something like, “This is the direction in which we are going. We have the support of the board, the administration, and most of the staff. I want you to be part of this. But if you aren’t, we’re still going forward.” And then do it. This may mean isolating this person, or not giving him or her the better assignments, but no one person, or even group of people, should be allowed to block the direction of the institution, overruling everyone else just because they disagree.