Managing Number Oneby Frank Hermespublished: June 22, 2006 This is the first in a series of articles from Library Leadership Network about libraries that employ solid management practices to achieve consistently exemplary results. These articles will explore how their leaders manage, their ability to understand the community they serve, the culture of the library, and those aspects that make the organization unique and value-creating. For the first in this series, we start at the top: The Columbus Metropolitan Library, which is currently ranked #1 in the country by Hennen's American Public Library Rating Index. To learn about the library, we visited with Pat Losinski, Executive Director; Chris Taylor, Director of Strategic Projects; and Kerry Bierman, Director of Community Relations and Development. In our discussions, we covered everything from Strategic Planning to technical services backlogs, stopping along the way to talk about staffing and organization, culture, and return on equity. Pat Losinski came to Columbus from his job running the Pikes Peak (CO) Library District in August of 2002. He was attracted to the job by the presence in Columbus of “all of the key ingredients” for success: good people, good physical plant and, most importantly, a service-oriented culture where those folks walking in and out of the library had long been referred to as customers (Says Pat: “Such a better term than ‘patrons,’ or ‘users.’”). AT CML, Pat inherited these great assets, but also ran into a budget scenario that signaled what he calls the “very end of the Roaring ‘90’s” ( those wonderful days when the tax coffers were overflowing and the library had become used to double digit increases in annual funding). His immediate task was to reduce the budget by $1.9 million in his first year, then by another $800 thousand the following year. At the same time, CML was dealing with typical cataloging and re-shelving backlogs, and large increases in operating measures such as circulation. At a higher level, Pat had a Board of Trustees asking some very good questions, such as “What results to you expect to achieve?” rather than just settling for a justification of the operating budget. How Pat and his team dealt with—and continue to deal with—these issues is discussed below. Planning at CML Pat Losinski believes in planning: “Without plans I am not sure I understand where the organization is headed—and I’m the leader!” From Pat’s point of view, planning has many virtues. First and foremost it creates focus (a word one hears a lot at CML). Having a plan allows for communication of this focus to the library’s stakeholders—the Board of Trustees, the staff, and the community. Lastly, it causes the organization to set goals, many of them quite measurable, which support the mission and vision of the library. CML employs what they call “community-based” planning. First, a steering committee made up of two or three senior staff, a couple of trustees, and five or so leaders chosen from the community. The steering committee is responsible for producing the strategic plan, with considerable help from the management team who produce documents and provide both input and feedback. The extra—and Pat believes fairly unique—ingredient is to enlist a group representing the various special interests that are served by the library community. This group is a source of in-depth discussion which is fed into the steering committee for consideration as the strategic plan is developed. This two-tier community approach, according to Pat, “has a complexity to it, and our whole reason for this complexity is to give as much voice to the multiple stakeholders (of the library) as possible.” Drafts of the plan are taken to the Trustees for their input, so when they are done, they have involved a great number of the library’s constituencies. Given this very thorough process, it’s a good thing that the library doesn’t do a new plan every year (the current plan covers 2004-2010). What is done on an annual basis is a set of tactical plans. These plans, fully consistent with the longer range strategic plan, drive the day-to-day processes of the library. We will discuss tactical plans later on in this article. For an example of the discussions around the strategic plan, let’s return to that question asked Pat by his trustees: “What results do you expect to achieve?” Pat takes it from here: A
very good question, and one that librarians haven’t always
dealt with in a proactive way. When you talk to people about
what they are trying to achieve with an increase in circulation, for
instance, what is your goal? Increase it by 10%?
20%? Decrease it? Do you care what kind of
circulation you are getting? In Columbus we are known for
high circulation, but I had a lengthy forum with a large group of
people here about our collection, and how resource allocations had
changed over time, without any plan in place. In higher
poverty, lower literacy areas we noticed that our AV circulation was
approaching 70%. At the same time, libraries were running
promotional activities to turn off the TV and other programs to promote
reading. We had to ask ourselves, are we helping to create
the problem (of low literacy) or are we part of the solution?
In a related vein, I asked the board, is my goal simply to increase
circulation from 16 million to 25 million over a 3-4 year
timeframe? We could do that, but it would mean changing
drastically the kind of library we have. We knew intuitively
we didn’t want to go in that direction, but until we had
these discussions, we couldn’t decide about shifting
materials allocation back towards materials that are more about
education and learning, and less about
entertaining. This led to our having a strategy to
promote literate behaviors—more than just reading, but
engaging in activities that promote reading, promote thinking, promote
curiosity, and promote learning.
Budget cuts and operating performance Down a level from strategic planning is “What has happened to the operational backlogs (and other similar operating problems) as circulation has grown and you have absorbed budget cuts?” The short answer: the backlog has become 48 hours while total staff has decreased by 70 FTE’s (18 in technical services). Self checkout stations now handle 95% of the transactions. At the same time, circulation has grown from 11.4 million (1999) to 16.5 million today. How was this (among other improvements) achieved? Well, first some consultants came in and looked at all of the operating departments and made recommendations as to how things could be done more efficiently. But it goes well beyond that, according to Pat: What
caused this? Focus. Stating the internal performance measure,
even though it was internal, in a public way, then measuring and
reporting results. Suddenly, staff understood
what’s important here. This is not to say that we
are about efficiency—it’s just that efficiency is a
means to the end of being able to provide top level service to the
public.
And the staff reductions (all through attrition, by the way) have enabled Pat and CML to continue “to attract and retain top performers and pay them appropriately.” Staffing and Organization Pat believes in staffing key positions with people who are professionals in their fields: “I recently read a want ad placed by a large urban library looking for a Chief Technology Officer. One of the requirements listed was an MLS, and I just couldn’t believe it! I was just struck by how ‘old school’ that was.” Not surprisingly, his senior finance, IT and HR operatives are professionals, and he recently brought in a card-carrying marketing executive to take over the Community Relations and Development post. It is instructive to look at this job as well as the Strategic Projects one, because while what they are called may not be unique, a lot of what they do, and how they approach their responsibilities, is indeed unique: Kerry Bierman, Director of Community Relations and Development, has spent his entire career in a succession of marketing and investor relations jobs, most recently at the Scotts company (lawn products, etc.). I asked him what it was like to come to work at a library: Libraries
are funded entities (unlike a corporation or other
non-profits). The daily hunger for money is not prevalent in
a funded organization. They have the luxury of knowing that
you will not wake up hungry tomorrow. This is sort of a down
side, because as a system we are not conscious of the return on
investment (ROI). Not knocking
anyone—it’s just a mindset. So coming
into this world from an ROI background, I have discovered that I need
to be an educator as much as I have to be a marketer.
Kerry moved into an existing slot and title, but is taking an increasingly different approach. Typical of most libraries and many companies, his predecessor was “an order taker,” responding to requests for signs and bookmarks. With appropriate support from Pat (who “understands the need for marketing” according to Kerry), he has worked hard to orient the staff to some new approaches. To illustrate this point, Kerry offers this analogy: Staff
used to say ‘I need this shirt cleaned, ironed and put on a
hanger,’ Now we are saying back to them: ‘I am not
sure you should be wearing that shirt.’ But we are doing this
very gently (‘let’s talk about where you are going
to wear a shirt;’ what do you want to accomplish by wearing
that shirt? and ‘how about the suit you are wearing it
with?’). So we are more designers and advisors, not
dry cleaners.”
Kerry and the executive team at CML understand the need to differentiate the library in this age of information-everywhere-at-anytime: “Information is like tennis shoes, it is a commodity…so in helping people with information, the library has a great opportunity to say ‘in a world full of tennis shoes, I am a Nike!’ That’s what we have to start doing, because we are almost as generic as the information.” Chris Taylor has been at CML for 18 years and although she is a librarian, her formal job description (as Director of Strategic Projects) does not require a library degree (although Chris admits that her background has helped a bit!). Her job is actually two jobs, or perhaps three. She is responsible for the strategic planning process of the library, as well as the annual tactical plans. Chris also manages performance measurement across the organization and heads up a group responsible for quality and process improvements. For process improvement, CML uses the Six Sigma methodology, something you would be more likely to find in use at General Electric as opposed to a library. Like Kerry, Chris works across the entire library as a consultant and educator, but also is responsible for monitoring and reporting on tactical plans. You might recall (from earlier in this article) that when Pat first arrived on the scene, he ordered a top-to-bottom look at each department. Under Chris, the focus has changed to looking at processes rather than looking at departments. This horizontal approach has proven more effective than looking at vertical “silos.” With the perspective of her length of service, Chris is a very good observer of the changes in culture at CML: “We are working on getting away from ‘perfectionism’ in order to get stuff done and out and useful. So we have become a bit riskier. We have gone from being just behind the leading/bleeding edge to closer to it.” At the same time, “we use more data and less gut feel in making decisions. Investigation into ROI is more prevalent.” And once a decision is made, “we will do a before and after look” at the affected area or process. Chris’s job is in fact a good bell weather of the culture at CML: It has evolved over time to include new responsibilities (and shed old ones). Like Kerry, and I suspect others on the executive team, she is able to “reinvent” her job, with Pat’s encouragement, to best meet the needs of the organization and the community they serve. On being #1 Clearly, Pat and his team enjoy the Hennen ranking. “It has tremendous local value—we get great press, and community support. The community’s support and usage feed the statistics, and we thank them for this.” But when asked if the surveys measure the right stuff, Pat is quick to say: “Increasingly, they are not. They are rear view mirror output based rather than outcome-based. Circulation numbers are an output, but what are we trying to do via circulation? We are trying to enrich lives, changing the lives of individuals for the better--these are the values and the roots of our support in the community.” Kerry and Chris are on the same wave length. In talking about perks provided donors to the library, Kerry notes: In the past we have raised funds by giving out parking passes, autographed books, and so on. I am trying to change that (because people really don’t need that stuff) so that we say that ‘your $10,000 gift will put 3,000 kids through a summer reading program.’ This is still an output, so what we are increasingly interested in as “what happens to those 3,000 kids?” We need to focus on this, because this is what matters. Echoes Chris: “Outcome based is the way to go. Because output-based measures tell you (only) if you’ve been busy, not if you have created value. It is much harder to do, but we must find better ways to measure outcomes that matter to the community. Data must enable you to tell the story to funders. In conclusion Columbus Metropolitan Library is a large public library, but there are lessons here for libraries of all types and sizes. While smaller libraries cannot always afford to have a full time Marketing Director or Director of Strategic Projects, or hire a squad of consultants, they also cannot afford to not find a way to perform the functions inherent in these jobs. So, the takeaway from CML is: Plan, focus, take risks, and discover new and better ways to measure your impact in the community (or campus) you serve! Frank Hermes is the Founder of the Library Leadership Network © 2006, Library Leadership Network, LLC. All Rights Reserve |