Leave No Jobs or Staff Members Unturned

Continuous improvement, constant change, process redesign, learning organization—these and similar terms are ubiquitous in the professional and managerial literature, but do we really take them to heart in our daily work? It's hard to live in an environment that is constantly morphing, and yet we are in the midst of exactly that, in our libraries, our universities, our daily lives. Moreover, we have to adapt to this shifting environment with fewer and fewer new resources. In the library, we are unlikely to be granted net increases in staff, except in the rare and lucky place that might be opening an entirely new branch or supporting a significantly expanded university program. Our only, and our best, resource is ourselves. We adapt through evolution—we have to grow ourselves into new skills and services. A revolution, however, may be necessary to spread change across all jobs and to increase competencies across all staff—even if it is a friendly velvet revolution.

The pattern of growth in libraries tends to be one of punctuated equilibrium rather than constant change. It's common to look at revamping a job when there is a personnel vacancy resulting from a retirement or to redesign jobs during a major reorganization, to do systematic training when implementing a new software system, or to have personal development plans that help individuals target skills relevant to their own current career path. This isn't moving us far enough fast enough, and it isn't moving the whole workforce of our organization in a consistent strategic dimension. We get a grant, or hire a temporary consultant, or we have one small unit or one great new person who does the innovative digitizing/metadata/assessment/publishing/e-book/literacy project that faculty are demanding; and the rest of the library staff assume they need not learn that new technical scheme or change their office routines because "those people" are doing it. Opportunities are passing us by, and we don't have the resources—or luck—to hire ready-made new hotshots to cover every need.

A multi-part training and redesign framework linked to a library's strategic plan is needed, and the commitment to apply it to every job and every person. Those two things are easy to conflate but must be looked at separately, with different processes for change. We should never fill a job, even the most seemingly ordinary low-level job, without taking the opportunity to redesign it to advance strategic goals and embed new skills in the organization; and we should ensure that every staffer and every department has a forward looking and perpetually unfinished set of developmental targets for training that advances not only the individual but the strategic goals of the library.

Job redesign can be very threatening, especially if it is done all at once across the whole library. It can be easier if it is a matter of policy that no vacancy goes unexamined by the management team at a high level: is this the chance to rearrange duties, eliminate one specialty in favor or another, target a new service, or move a position to a completely different division? Most managers have a "what if" list running in the back of their heads, along the lines of, "what would I do if Y leaves, or if X position becomes vacant?" One can jump-start similar processes by polling staff as to their own career goals: is there a job you've always wished you could do, even if it's not something for which you have all the skills? Can we grow our own—leverage complementary staff interests with the needs of the wide organization? Maybe yes, if there is a strategic training plan that embeds organizational priorities.

A strategic approach to training is a plan that goes beyond individual development and looks at the needs of the organization, on two or three levels: which skills and competencies are important for every staff member to have; which ones are needed by the organization somewhere, but perhaps only in one...