Copenhagen was the last stop on my workshop tour of the Nordic countries. I ran two sessions – a full day for librarians from across Denmark and Germany, plus a half day for Danish library managers. My hosts were Bibliotekarforbundet – the Danish Union of Librarians.
We used a range of methods and techniques, including the Library Island activity, to explore issues of advocacy, strategy, inclusion, innovation, and coping with a turbulent political environment.
Participants discussed the possibilities of an uncertain future with their peers, then began to design practical responses to the challenges they had identified.
At the managers’ workshop, it became clear that tools were needed to support quick, credible internal and external conversations about libraries’ changing role in Danish society. These would be used to build stakeholder understanding of Danish libraries’ mission, and help staff members to see how their work fit into the larger priorities of their organisation.
I helped them build a series of strategy and design activities around a stack of napkins obtained from our great hosts at the MBK training venue.
Each set of discussions, diagrams, dot points, and documents was written onto a paper napkin to demonstrate the possibility of conveying important messages and convincing arguments even within the limited context of a coffee break.
As Oxford University’s Rafael Ramirez put it in our recent discussion on scenario planning, such “back-of-the-napkin” activities can be valuable as a starting point, or in constrained financial circumstances:
The metaphor I use is buying a television. If you don’t have a lot of time, or your organisation has been cut back, you may have to do only a good-enough piece of work: like buying a cheap black-and-white television to see who has won the World Series.
If you have enough time or funds, you can buy yourself a big colour television which shows more detail about what is happening. […] To get more detail, better arguments, better references: a better, more detailed colour picture on your television. But getting started costs very little indeed.
An organisation’s mission, needs, and offer should be clear, compelling, and easy to articulate succinctly. Our napkin challenges in Copenhagen helped managers to develop the strategic awareness and communication skills to engage both staff and stakeholders with the changing mission of their organisation.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 
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