CIL2010: Ken Haycock morning keynote
It’s hard to talk with the decision-makers. If we have low performance, we’re told to do better but not given more resources (unlike the police, who perform badly and get more money). If we have high performance, sometimes we’re discouraged from keeping that going because it’s using too many resources. Stakeholders with the purse strings just don’t understand. We have every low expectations of us.
How do we harness the energy we have in our students and make positive things happen? He reports that studies find that as long as the library staff smile at the customers, they’re satisfied even if they didn’t get good service. He gave an example of figuring out what the cost & payoff are for the decisions that you make. “We can’t be all things to all people. That’s what leads to low expectations.”
Librarians don’t want to be leaders. The power of influence. Power is the possession of control, authority or influence over others. People can reward you through pay raises or performance reviews. People can punish you by transferring you to the fringes of your system, taking away projects you enjoy. There is also “expert power.” But Haycock says that expertise is highly over-rated in regards to power. The expertise that our profession is selling is in areas that our customers already feel they’re expert in themselves (even if they’re not).
What do influential people look like. A lot is trust. Trust is the most critical component in relationships. A good reputation is priceless. Integrity cannot be bought and should never be sld. Most people are filled with self-doubt. Listening is more important than talking. Caring managers always help their staff to succeed. Carefully select those you wish to mentor. Mentoring is a manager’s most powerful tool. Some people are not interested in being mentored. But Haycock believes formal mentoring programs are a waste of time. Instead, informal mentoring programs have more of an effect on each person.
You are the CEO of your own life and your own destiny.
Haycock hates the phrase “it is what it is” (as do I). He says he feels like throwing up when he hears it and if you don’t like how it is, then fight to change it.
Trust is based on character, competence, confidence, credibility, consistency, and congruence.
The trust that libraries use is “spray and pray.” We send stuff out in as many directions as possible and hope something sticks. Public relations is all about us. Marketing is not public relations and publicity. It’s finding out who your users are, what the need, and how we can meet those needs. Advocacy instead is getting the message out. We need to stop talking about libraries and start talking about the actual issues in our communities–all the places that we have evidence to show that we make a difference in our communities.
The single biggest influencer in advocacy efforts is connecting to the values of your customers.
Universal Principles of Advocacy
<ul>
<li>Reciprocation (feel obliged to return favors)
<li>Authority (look to experts)
<li>Commitment/Consistency (with commitments & values)
<li>Scarcity (less available more we want it)
<li>Liking (more we like more we want to say yes)
<li>Social Proof (what others are doing)
</ul>
How do you show the scarcity for our free resources? How do we show value for the different library services we provide .
When our users think about persuasion most people emphasize their own experiences too much rather than depending on data or techniques. Increase your persuasive power by understanding good practices. People want to be consistent and committed. The rarer something is the more people want it. People tend to follow the majority.
The pillars of influence are the relationship with the person, the intended approach, the desired results, and the context for the issue, individual, and organization.
“Collaboration is an unnatural act between two consenting adults.”
ROTI – return on time invested. We are so into perfection, but we can’t afford to be perfectionists. What are we going to invest our time in? In our organizations the most previous resource is time, not money.
We need to be more strategic in leveraging our strengths and weaknesses, which are things that we have control over. What are the opportunities in the external environment?
Our intuition is often wrong. We should use data.
FOCUS: Flexible, Observable, Courageous, Useful, and Supportive
A method for writing project proposals: SOPPADA. Include your subject objective, present situation, proposal, advantages, disadvantages, and action you want taken.
It’s lack of faith in ourselves that is our greatest impediment. Building relationship and influence are generally not considered part of someone’s job. Talking is not influencing. You have to understand the client well, connect with them. And we need to realize that we can’t influence everyone so we need to strategically focus on the groups that we can make a difference with.
Concentrate resources on a few key areas. Know that what you do is about relationships, approaches, contexts, and framing issues appropriately. We need to assess time and costs, leverage resources, measure results, building influence, using evidence, and connecting our agendas to library missions. Library staff also need to start showing up at all city council meetings , as other departments already do.
cil2010, computers in libraries
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