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Library Leadership Network Strategic Planning Series I recently spoke to a group of library leaders about strategic planning. To get the discussion going, I asked the audience how many of their libraries did and did not have strategic plans in place. A full two-thirds of them raised their hands to indicate that they did not have a strategic plan! I thanked them for their honesty and told them that I was quite surprised by this. Then I got on with the presentation and some lively and productive interaction. Later, I thought about this a great deal. Certainly some of the “poll results” could be explained by why these people had decided to attend my session: not having a plan, they wanted to learn more about the process. Had they recently completed one, the last thing in the world they would probably have wanted to do was to listen to some old business guy talk about planning! But I was still surprised at the number, especially given the fact that most of these leaders represented good-size, well-funded libraries. A couple of days later, I ran into one of the attendees, a representative of the minority having a plan in place. She suggested that some of the people in the room may have been subordinates, not directors, and thus may not have known that their library had an active strategic plan. While I accepted this as a partial explanation of the poll results, my reaction was that if managers and staff within a library don’t know of the existence of a plan, the library should not have bothered doing one in the first place! In case you can’t tell, I feel strongly that every enterprise, especially ones that are as visible as libraries, should have an operative, relevant strategic plan. The plan should be a living, breathing document that influences the daily operations and direction of the library. It should be known to the staff, those who oversee and fund the library, and those who are served by the library. Ideally, these three audiences should have played a significant role in the process that led to the creation of the plan. Over the next two months, the Library Leadership Network will publish a series of articles that will, I hope, be of assistance to library leaders who are responsible for managing and/or playing an active role in their institution’s planning process. For all libraries, this will mean the director, those directly responsible for oversight (library boards, for example), and those who have managerial responsibility within the library. In very large libraries, it will also mean the person whose primary job is to drive the strategic planning process. The series will consist of articles that discuss the various components of library planning. We will try to make them as informal and readable as possible, emphasizing the practical and de-emphasizing the scholarly. We will be pleased if our readers comment on the articles and share their planning experiences with each other—that’s what LLN is all about! The first article is called “Library Strategic Planning—Why Bother?” Subsequent articles in the series:
We hope you enjoy and benefit from this series! Frank Hermes |
