Sea of change, New Hampshire Library Association, 050517
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A look at roadblocks to change and ways to work around, over, and sometimes through these obstacles.
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Sea of change, New Hampshire Library Association, 050517
- 1. A sea of change Presented by George Needham at the New Hampshire Library Association Spring Conference May 5, 2017
- 2. How many librarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
- 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
- 9. But the stakes are high
- 10. Roadblocks to Change • Exception mentality • Expectations • Entitlement thinking • Experience trap • Exclusion Adapted from Flipping the Switch by John G. Miller (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2006)
- 12. Expectations
- 15. Experience trap
- 16. Exclusion
- 19. The necessary reassurances • Trust • Compassion • Stability • Hope Based on Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie (Gallup Press, 2008)
- 22. The Rogers adoption curve Innovators Early Early Late Laggards Dead- 2.5% Adopters Majority Majority 15% enders 13.5% 34% 34% 1%
- 23. Dealing with the naysayers
- 25. Let’s stay in touch! George Needham gneedham@delawarelibrary.org 740-373-2475
Editor's Notes
- Thank the organizers for the invitation Great theme for the conference
- 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 ALA- accredited MLS. “Change?”
- 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) Let’s adjust Karen’s rule for the passing of time and call it “The Rule of 1982.” Todays, videos and computers are considered basic and permanent fundamentals of public library service. But in 1982, they were considered by many of our colleagues to be fads and frills. I know—I was around to fight those battles. But maker spaces? Musical instruments? Seed libraries? Those are the frills today that some of our colleagues would cut in a New York minute.
- 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?
- 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.
- “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” W. Edwards Deming
- I only have two bulletpoint slides, and the next one doesn’t come until slide 19.
- Do you ever read a business book, or hear a speaker, or read a blog post, and think, “My boss really needs to hear this?” If so, there’s a very good chance that you are the one who needs it. As John Miller puts it, “We tend to teach to others what we need to hear ourselves.” I’m not immune to this way of thinking: I tend to be upbeat and positive in my presentations to library audiences because I need to keep myself feeling upbeat and positive, and I hope that by sharing that feeling, we will all be more positive and it will become self-reinforcing. So when you hear something and think, “My boss—or my partner or my child or my mother or my colleagues—need to hear this,” continue that thought by asking yourself, “And how can I apply this to my work or my library or my personal life?”
- Don’t get in caught in the trap of expecting the worst every time. You can make the most of even the least promising situation. Let’s say your administration requires you to go to, oh I don’t know, a presentation by George Needham. You’re dreading it, you just know it’s going to be worthless, a waste of time. As a result, it probably will be. By expecting what the future will be, you are contributing to that result, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. You can’t learn or change if you expect that the process is useless or that the change is doomed to fail.
- Why should we feel like we deserve something just because we’ve been around for a long time? We need to prove our worth, in terms that are meaningful to the people for whom that worth is being delivered, on a regular basis. Just because we’ve been valuable in the past doesn‘t necessarily mean we will be valuable in the future.
- Of course, a good cartoon from The New Yorker can sum it up much better than I can.
- What got you here may not get you there. It is so easy to think that we achieved what we have by doing x, y, and z, so we just need to keep doing x, y, and z over and over to continue to be successful. SVR WATSON story To avoid this trap personally, Miller suggests asking yourself “How can I enhance my effectiveness?” and “What can I do to acquire new skills?” In a library context, I would suggest asking on a regular basis, “How can we help push our parent institution’s mission forward?” and “How can we provide the appropriate services required by new generations of students, faculties and residents to be successful in their lives?”
- The minute we discount someone’s opinion because she lacks an MLS, or because “he’s just a kid,” or because he is not a cataloger or a reference librarian or a tenured staff member, or because she is a person of color or an immigrant, we’re practicing exclusion. And by devaluing what someone says or suggests simply because of who he or she is, we are cutting ourselves off from valuable sources of learning and growth.
- 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.
- I would be a lousy keynote speaker if I left you at that last slide, right?
- Slide 19…The last bullet point list! 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
- 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.
- 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 for a change to succeed. This is Everett Rogers’ diffusion of technology graph. Discuss each of the first five tranches. Then… 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” and “wait and wait” groups along. But where do we spend most of our time in libraries? An inordinate amount spent 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 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 are using e-content 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.
- 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.