Lethbridge Public Library's "Have a Seat" Campaign

Lethbridge Public Library did a really good community engagement campaign called "Have a Seat".  It was good for two reasons:

First, they came up with a great way to talk to the community.  They got a red leather chair and they took it around to community events, the local pool, wherever they could find people, and invited the public to sit down and consider one question: "How do you fit a community into a library?"  I love this!  The chair is a vivid, symbol of the campaign that catches attention and invites people to engage. Once they are seated, they are in a posture that naturally invites lingering and contemplation.

The question is really good too.  I love how they limited it to one open ended question rather than a survey.  The question is open ended but it is also somewhat complex, requiring some thought to understand; and it is subtly leading, suggesting that fitting the community into the library is the issue at hand.

They talked 700 people.  They took a different approach with "community builders," sitting them in the chair and interviewing them (asking a series of questions).  Very thoughtful way of extending the visual metaphor of the chair into different types of engagement.

The second thing they did really well was analyzing and compiling the results.  You don't get any quantitative information with one open ended question, so how do you crunch the data? They identified what they called "story themes", common refrains which surfaced over and over again, and they gave them compelling names.  There were six of them:

• We Love the Library!
• People Want More of the Good Stuff (less of the not so good)
• Well…I Didn’t Know That!
• By the Way I’m Having Just a Little Trouble Using the eResources
• Since My Life is Filled to the Max (it makes a difference to me that the Library is close to where I live or work)
• It’s Important that the Library be a Community Hub (a place to learn, discuss, interact, have fun and sometimes expand who we are).

The Trouble with PLA Service Responses

I do a lot of community needs assessment using the PLA's Strategic Planning for Results process.  It has a lot of strengths (focused on community needs, etc.) but some weaknesses too.

SP4R includes "service responses", a list of 18 services which libraries can deliver in response to community needs.  The service responses have their uses; for starters, they are a good summary of the wide range of things that a modern public library can do.  Also, they focus on the benefit that the community receives from the service, as opposed to the activity of the library.  For example:

"Residents will have someone to answer their questions on a wide array of topics."  

See how that is focused on residents, and not on the library?  This is the right way to describe services when you are talking to the public.  It  is good advocacy language. 

There are however two problems with service responses.  First, they can lead to a loss of context when collecting public input.  For example, lets say the community tells you there is a teenage graffiti epidemic, and determines that an appropriate service response to that would be 

"Express Creativity: Create and Share Content.  (Residents will have the services and support they need to express themselves by creating original print, video, audio or visual content.)"

The idea being that the little hoodlums can come be creative in the library rather than on garage doors.

The problem arises when down the line, someone receives this public input and starts deciding what the library will do to implement that service response.  If they don't have all the information, they might decide to do a seniors' painting program.  Which would be fine, except it misses the reason why the service response was picked in the first place.

This is an artificial sort of example, but the point is that when you move from 1) community need to 2) these very broad and general service responses and then 3) into a specific library activity there may be a disconnect between #1 and #3.  Really.  I've seen it happen.

The second problem with the service responses is what I call "takeout menu syndrome."  If you let your community representatives pick service responses, they are liable to pick the ones that sound good to them for whatever reason.  No matter how much you tell them to pick based on community needs, they will tend to like one or the other, just because it sounds good to them.  And they will pick that one, as if it was moo goo gai pan and they were hungry.  Mmm, moo goo gai pan.

How to avoid these problems?  I do show community groups the service responses, as part of my effort to show them the range of things that libraries can do.  I do not ask them to pick service responses.  When it comes time to talk about what the library should do (that is step 3, after we have identified community needs and discussed all the things that public libraries can do), I simply ask them to pick the community needs that the library should respond to and to say whatever they want about what exactly the library should do in response.  After that it is up to the library to refine and polish that input and to reference Service Responses if they so choose.

Library funding in Alberta

Personal responsibilities of library trustees

Another video

A quick introduction to library service in Alberta

Another video

How to be an effective trustee

I am going to try to post some videos I have created so I can show them from the web when I'm out of the office.  Here goes #1, How to be an Effective Trustee

Polarity Management

... Is a problem solving methodology, well summarized by Barry Johnson at http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/14-06-19.Barry_Johnson.Polarity_Management.pdf

It is an alternative to "either/or" and "independent alternatives" decision making.  Polarities are situations where options are interconnected, e.g. should I take care of myself or my kids first?  (Bad example but it shows how one alternative might serve the apparent goal of the other alternative, as when you put the oxygen mask on yourself first.)

There are some techniques to incorporating polarity management into your decision, which could be summarized as "balance, grasshopper."

This has little connection to anything else I'm doing but I wanted to capture it before it blows away.  😀

Public engagement techniques, categorized by situation

Yet another interesting online resource ...

Design with Dialogue describes four types of group consultation approaches, the situations they apply to and the facilitation techniques that work for each.

Exploration is about examining a situation in an open ended way.  It emphasizes learning and insight over action and results.  Techniques include Conversation Cafe and World Cafe.  It could be a useful first step in community needs assessment for libraries but it requires additional followup.

Conflict transformation is for resolving conflict.  Techniques include Sustained Dialogue and Compassionate Listening.  It wouldn't normally be relevant in community needs assessment unless you have a situation where the public is upset about something, e.g. the relocation of a beloved library.  It could also be useful for resolving conflicts between and within board and staff.

Decision making is about getting to the point where you decide something.  If "exploration" is the beginning, "decision making" is the end.  It is appropriate for when "public engagement is needed on an issue to strengthen policy decisions and public knowledge" - and that is exactly the case with community needs assessment for libraries. "These methods are recommended when the issue at hand is going to be decided on by a single entity, such as a government agency or committee, that is genuinely interested in learning about their constituents’ informed opinions and shared values."  This is the sweet spot for library planning.  Appropriate techniques include National Issues Forums, Deliberative Polling, 21st Century Town Meetings, Charrettes, and Consensus Conferences.

"Key features of decision making methods include unbiased “naming” of the issue and balanced framing of options, creating space for participants to weigh all options and consider different positions, and identifying the public’s core values around an issue."

Collaborative action empowers the group to make decisions and can even assign responsibility for results to the group or members thereof.  It is appropriate when dealing with partners.  This level of empowerment and offloading of responsibility seems a bit much for the public library / community relationship.  Study Circles, Future Search, and Appreciative Inquiry work for collaborative situations.

There are so many facilitation techniques out there.  It is useful to see them categorized like this so you know which ones fit your situation.

Community engagement resources available online

"Participatory Methods Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual" includes general guidelines and tips for participatory methods, and describes ten approaches (World Cafe, etc.).  It is a very in depth 167 page PDF.  Available here.

"The Change Handbook" lists  a whole lot of techniques for group discussion and analysis.  Here is a screenshot from the website:

Most or all of these are basically group facilitation techniques that can be applied to any group analysis or investigation.  So these will work with, for example, community needs assessment.

Charrettes

A charrette is an "intense period of design or planning activity." (Wikipedia)  It comes from the world of architecture, arts and industrial design; a "charrette" was originally a cart that held student's architectural models.

A charrette puts people together on-site to work collaboratively and cross-functionally on a problem.  It is an intense process that compresses time and assumes a deadline, but it is also multi-day and immersive.  Imagine a group of people working frantically on something around a common table, out of their silos, with no consideration of formal roles and a determination to get something done.

There is also supposed to be a design component to the problem solving.   I take that to mean that a desirable end product is the focus, rather than technical or institutional feasibility; and that experimentation, rapid prototyping and a get 'er dun attitude prevails.

The parable of the front door

Here's a story I have occasionally used in board training...

Once upon a time, there was a library.  The board and staff were very dedicated, and they worked hard to make the library as good as it could be.  They made sure the collection had all the new titles from the bestseller lists, they ran new programs they heard about from other libraries and they put rules and procedures in place to make sure nothing ever went wrong.

One day a patron came in and said, "This is a very nice library but you should do something about the front door."

"What do you mean?" asked the librarian.  "What is wrong with the door?"

"It looks so old and beat up," answered the patron.

The librarian and the board chair, who was conveniently in the library at the time, went outside to look at the door.  Sure enough it was weathered and chipped.  Why had they never noticed this?  Because they always entered the library through the back door, where the staff parking lot was.

The moral of the story: Patrons know stuff you don't know.  Even if you are a professional librarian and/or an experienced trustee; especially if you are one of those things; the public has a different perspective than you.  Your very expertise and your institutional perspective blinds you to their reality.  What seems important to you is unimportant to them, and what is important to them may be invisible to you.

Jasper library is finally open

Was passing through Jasper AB and saw their library is finally open.  They had such a hellish time with their renovation.  It took years (!) longer than expected and their temporary location (under the bleachers at a rink) was...challenging.  I am so happy for them.

Exterior showing the junction of original building and new extension 

The old library is now mostly cosy seating

The new extension is modern but warm

Second floor of the old library is an awesome kids area

Another dynamic planning methodology

I have become interested in something I'll call dynamic planning.  I am not sure if that's the right term, because various language is out there, sometimes rooted in particular institutions or industries and sometimes someone's intellectual property.  It will have to do for now.

Dynamic planning (or whatever it should be called) is the practice of maintaining an ever changing strategic plan.  Instead of doing some big planning process every couple or few years that results in a Holy Binder that is faithfully implemented (or ignored), a living plan is constantly adjusted and updated.  I really like this approach for a few reasons:

• You are more likely to actually use and benefit from your plan if you are paying attention to it (which you would have to do if you are reviewing and updating the thing)
• A frequently updated plan is never out of date or obsolete
• It might end up being less effort to constantly update a dynamic plan, compared to the work of creating a new plan from scratch every few years.

I got the term "Dynamic Planning" from the Dynamic Planning Institute, which is a PLA initiative that involves several months of online study and a three day course in Washington, DC.  I can't participate but as I study the Institute from afar, it seems to include a mix of stuff including design thinking and community engagement.

The word "agile" seems to be commonly used in this context, especially in connection with systems development and other STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) activities.  

"Real Time Strategic Change"  is a phrase used by one Jake Jacobs.  His website identifies principles that support change in real time  They are shown in one of those "management circle of life" diagrams with no beginning and end, but they include

• building understanding (learning and also teaching others what you know)
• making reality a key driver (sort of like an internal / external environmental scan)
• engaging and including (leading and also inviting input)
• preferred futuring (the planning part, done by looking at the present state and imaging the best future)
• creating community (individual and group performance)
• fast results (planning the future and being there, in real time.)

Could there be drawbacks or risks to a dynamic planning approach?  I seem to recall that ever changing plans have doomed more than one army; there is certainly a risk to never seeing a plan through to a conclusion.  Leadership Freak identifies six problems with flipflopping, including confusion, delay and loss of leadership credibility.  Okay, we are warned.  Be careful out there.

RACI charts, agile and otherwise

RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed.  A RACI chart or matrix defines who fills those roles for a given task, step or function.

The Responsible one does the work and gets it done.  (The Worker)
The Accountable one has the ultimate authority and accountability.  (The Manager)
The Consulted one has skin in the game and needs to be part of the process.  (The Stakeholder)
The Informed one is connected and needs to know what is going on.  (The Audience)

RACI charts are useful for workload management (making sure some poor Worker doesn't get saddled with too much work), for ensuring buy-in from the Manager, for giving Stakeholders the input they deserve and for effectively communicating to any Audience that is interested.

RACI analysis can support agile processes (which can change mid-course) by defining people's higher roles.  Knowing who has to do the work, who has ultimate signoff, who has a stake in the results and who should be in the loop is important if you change things.

Another new library needs assessment / planning model

Another library planning thingee has come to my attention:

Website is at http://www.ala.org/pla/education/dynamicplanning

Four things

I believe that community engagement and needs assessment

1. is a "kindergarten skill", i.e. we are all born with the basic ability to do it if we try (although it comes easier to some than others)
2. Can be done in many ways, i.e. there is no one magic way to do it
3. Is best done iteratively, i.e. over and over again
4. Can be analyzed in highfalutin' ways, but really just boils down to communicating: talking and listening.

Active vs. passive needs assessment

When it comes to listening to your community, you can do it actively:

• engaging patrons at the checkout desk, at programs, etc.
• engaging people anywhere you run into them, at the grocery store etc.
• identifying agencies that are potential partners or otherwise important and initiating a conversation
• doing a survey
• holding a community needs assessment meeting
• asking questions and inviting input on social media

You can also listen to your community passively:

• reading the local newspaper, listening to community radio and watching local TV news
• monitoring local social media
• looking up community statistics and information from the federal census, from ecmap.ca, and other sources
• reading your municipal strategic plan and other planning documents from local organizations.

Most of us would probably think that active listening is somehow best, maybe because it takes a little more work.  I do think that active listening has the advantage of being visible: the community sees you doing it, which has its own value. But passive listening is useful too.

PNLA 2016 conference

My takeaways from this conference I attended in Calgary:

"Design thinking" could be part of needs assessment and service planning.  More on this later.

"Community engagement is like a snowball - you just gotta get it going" (then watch out)

"Lively Library" signage - put it out when you have a noisy program etc. - a courtesy heads-up and also piques curiosity 

Risk and how to manage it in a library:

- show stories of failures across system, to learn and also to legitimize

- consider risk in which, even in failure, something is gained

-risk mitigation from project mngmnt could be useful

"Microlearning"

 Learner engagement is lower when you don't refresh the content (even if they're not familiar with the content)

Cathy Ostlere, author of Lost, gave an amazing talk.

Design thinking for libraries

I heard Dan Buchner give a presentation on this at the PNLA 2016 conference and it got my wheels turning.

Design thinking is a method for needs assessment, analysis and planning.  It starts with people's values and aspirations, seeking solutions that meet those needs.

Business think    Vs.    Design think:

Logical                        Intuitive

Deductive/inductive     Abductive

Proof requirement        "What if"

Precedents required    Free from history

Right and wrong          A better way

Quick decision             Open possibilities

Anti-ambiguity             Ambiguity YEAH

Results                        Meaning

Identify a problem,     Identify values
plan approaches          and resulting aspirations
and tactics                   and desired experiences

Besides a general attitude and approach, design thinking includes a methodology for interviewing people about their values, aspirations etc; and an implementation philosophy that stresses action, experimentation and prototyping.

There is a guide available at designthinkingforlibraries.com

Fire truck at Calgary Public Library

CPL recently moved a fire truck into their downtown branch for kids to play on.

I was particularly impressed by this because CPL is moving to a new location within two years.  They are not coasting during this interval.

Libraries Transforming Communities

Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC from here on out) is an American Library Association initiative.  It "seeks to strengthen library's role as core community leaders and change agents."

I agree with the spirit and the values of LTC and I would enthusiastically implement it if I was running a public library.  BUT, my role is to support service planning in particular, and I don't think LTC helps you write a library plan.  In particular, it doesn't serve as a good needs assessment tool to guide library service planning.  It isn't intended to.

To do needs assessment in support of library planning, you need to talk to the community to find out what's going on, then select library services that respond to local needs.  For example, you talk and you find out there is a graffiti epidemic and little hoodlums are terrorizing the streets because there is nothing for kids to do.  So the library starts offering youth programs and having teen only Friday nights with movies and gaming and popcorn and this contributes to a successful solution and the library gets a thank you letter from local police.  (True Alberta story, BTW.)  Identification of local need + a library service that responds = a good plan and good outcomes.

LTC is kinda like that.  In a way, its even more community focused than Strategic Planning for Results, which is ALA's older community needs assessment / library planning model.  But that is the "problem".  LTC is totally community focused.  It's all about what happens in the community.  The library plays a role in that, helps the thing to happen, but what happens is not a library thing.

For example, one anecdote from an ALA webinar I watched mentioned the case of a library which used needs assessment to uncover a burning community desire to change a traffic light in town.  The library helped citizens to organize and lobby and get the light changed.  That's great, and the library played a useful, appropriate role in the process.  But the process did not uncover anything about what the library should be doing.  The library's current and future role was never planned or examined.

Again, I am not criticizing LTC.  I'm just saying that LTC doesn't help a library plan its future.  

A folksy, Will Rogers style statement on roles and responsibilities

"We all play different roles in our lives.  We are parents, children, homeschoolers, basketball players, library trustees, mayors, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers ...  And some of these roles we play, these hats we wear, are contradictory.  Sometimes different hats pull you in different directions.  

Try to remember what role you are playing at any given time.  If you are a library trustee and also a town councillor, for example, the minute a library board meeting begins, you act as a trustee and not as a councillor.  That's the hat you have on at that time.

When town council meets, that's when you are a councillor first.

 And remember,"

[says Will as he hooks a cuspidor with his foot and pulls it close, spits, winks, reaches into the pickle barrel for a treat, and begins tuning his banjo]

"You'll look silly if you try to wear more than one hat at a time!"

In Praise of Wikipedia

I don't know what the consensus is today, but last time I checked, lots of people were dubious about Wikipedia.  Lots of smart people said that mob-written content couldn't be trusted.  And it's true, I have found mistakes, heard about agenda-driven edits, and recognize the weaknesses of the wiki model.

But you know what Wikipedia is the best at?  Telling you if some vague concept you've heard about is really a "thing".

Let's take, for example, "workflow analysis".  I ran into this term a few years ago, and I remember wondering whether it was a recognized technique or just words that someone put together, equivalent to, say, "playing banjo in the dark."  So I looked it up in Google and saw there was a Wikipedia entry for it.  Then I knew it was a field of human endeavor that was recognized by some set of people to be "A Thing".  

The circle of life, management style

I have been using an image in some of my board training that looks like this:

I tell boards that they should be most active in the planning and evaluation stages, leaving implementation, operations and measurement to library staff.  Governance in action!  Where a good board should be!

I also use this image as the leadup to a joke.  If you don't want to put in the work that this "virtuous cycle of management" involves, I say, there is an alternative....

And then comes the punchline:

Heh ha har de har ha

I saw another version of  this Management Circle of Life or whatever-you-want-to-call-it and I began to wonder, where did it come from?  A bit of Googling revealed it is known as the Deming Cycle, or the Shewhart Cycle, or the PDCA Cycle.  It is said to be originated by Walter Shewhart and thereafter developed by W. Arthur Deming.  

The common-sense basis of this management cycle goes back to Moses but its modern origin is with Walter Shewhart.  Shewhart developed the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle in the 1920s as part of his management theories that also included data-driven process control.  His student Deming popularized and fine tuned the cycle, renaming it Plan-Do-Study-Act to emphasize the analysis that is part of evaluation.

My version of the cycle splits their "check" (or "study") step into two steps ("measure" and "evaluate") and eliminates their "act" step.  

I actually think my version is better, at least for libraries:

• I see measurement and evaluation as being quite separate, with staff being responsible for measurement (counting program attendance, circulation etc.) and boards responsible (partially at least) for evaluation. 
• I don't think you should "act" immediately after checking/studying/evaluating; you need to decide how to act first!  In other words, planning must happen in the middle there.

Strategic Planning for Results

The Old Testament of library planning

Do you want to write a strategic plan or plan of service for your public library?  You can't go wrong starting with Sandra Nelson's book Strategic Planning for Results (shortened to SP4R by me and absolutely no one else on the planet.)

We use this as our default planning methodology in Alberta public libraries for the following reasons:

• It is written by librarians for libraries and it fits the public library situation.
• It emphasizes services:  
• There are lots of important things a library can include in a strategic plan (governance, succession, infrastructure, etc. etc.) but nothing is more important than service choices.  It isn't obvious what libraries do anymore (if it ever was).  Will your library be a wonderland for young children?  A drop-in center for at-risk populations?  A creation space for artists and techies?  A research facility?  All of these and many more are options.  But unfortunately, you can't do everything!
• SP4R is all about choosing services.  In fact it includes a pretty good description of all the services that a public library is likely to offer (more on that later.)
• It focuses on the community:
• So if the library has to choose what services to offer, how should it decide?  It should consult with the community.  Services must respond to community need.  That research library that Joe Librarian desperately wants to run might not be what Four Corners, Alberta really needs.
• SP4R lets the community decide what service the library will offer.  More precisely, the community identifies local needs and library services that meet those local needs are selected.
• It includes a good process:
• It ain't easy talking to the public.  There are a lot of them, for one thing.  How do you survey the community and allow them to guide the library's plans?
• SP4R includes robust and simple techniques for consulting the community.  It is based on public meetings and it includes lots of directions for how to facilitate those meetings and use the results.
• SP4R also instructs you how to take the meeting results and use them to write a plan including goals and objectives.