Tag: professional development

Planning for 2023: Black Box Organizations

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A living organism can survive only by exchanging materials with its environment: by being an open system.

Vega Zagier Roberts

Every year, around this time, I like to share a tool which can help with your planning.

Though the shift from 2022 to 2023 is just a quirk of the calendar, the arrival of a new year tends to focus our attention on what’s coming. People make resolutions, use the holiday season to take stock and decide where they want to go next, or treat January 1st as a turning point for their lives at work or home.

This year, I want to share a tool which I created after reading Vega Zagier Roberts’ essay “The Organization of Work“. It explores organizations of all kinds – from projects to families, from teams to institutions – as “black boxes” with inputs and outputs.

It gets us to reflect on the pressures which are placed on us from within and without when we try to manage undertakings. It can form the basis for useful questions and reflections at the outset of a project, whether you carry out the task alone or with others. And it can also give insights into the state of a system which is already in place.

To start off, choose an organization, project, or undertaking which you want to reflect on. If you’re doing this task with others, you may each like to draw your boxes and follow the steps separately, or you can work together on, say, a shared whiteboard.

Draw a box like the one below, with an arrow going into it and an arrow coming out:

We can imagine that systems are boxes like these: something is put into them, they do their work, and as a result of this process, something emerges on the other side.

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Dream and Deliver 2018

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Last year, I delivered a session called “Dream and Deliver” for librarians from across south-west England, hosted by Service Delivery Manager Tabitha Witherick and her colleagues at Libraries Unlimited. (The workshop’s excellent title was Tabitha’s idea).

Tabitha writes:

Dream and Deliver: Finding New Ideas, Developing Relationships, and Making Good Things Happen on a Budget

I had the pleasure of working with Matt on a regional project to bring together library people from across South West England, to provide a workshop packed with creative, practical tips and techniques for strengthening the library’s relationship with the community, empowering staff, and delivering spectacular, innovative, cost-effective programmes and services.

Matt is incredibly easy to work with; he supported me with information to complete funding applications, promotional materials to engage participants and helpful communication pre and post workshop. On the day the participants experienced a highly interactive session. Matt puts everyone at ease and fosters a collaborative atmosphere.

By the afternoon the group were creating new library experiences together, being encouraged to understand inclusivity and diverse perspectives and needs, experimenting and evaluating, all within the safe space that Matt had created for them.

As a result the follow up pledges the group put forward were really inspiring!

But don’t take my word for it, see what the participants said:

‘Matt is amazing! Really engaging, fun and informative. I look forward to using some of the techniques back at the ranch. Great, out of the box thinking, very refreshing. Can we borrow him please?’

‘Matt was really good at engaging everyone and making us all feel a bit special. I will definitely use the practical ideas like the penguin and kinder egg.’

‘A really innovative, refreshing workshop with an inspiring presenter. Lots of things to take away and think about and so many games and ideas to try back at the library. Lots of fun!’

‘It reminded me to look for solutions rather than simply identify problems. I feel renewed – there is a future in libraries!’

My Visit to Library Island: Eli Neiburger, Ann Arbor District Library

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Library Island, the participatory activity which reaches the parts other professional development cannot reach, is here! You can read more and download your copy of the free, CC-licensed PDF file here.

I’m featuring some accounts of the Island from people who have attended Island sessions, or run Islands of their own, to give you a better sense of what it means to take part in, or even organise, your own Library Island.

Last time, Sherlonya Turner of Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) in Michigan, USA joined us for her account of running Library Island. Sherlonya and her colleagues ran a tailor-made session at LibCamp 2019, a professional development event for regional librarians hosted by AADL.

Now AADL Deputy Director Eli Neiburger takes up the story.

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My Visit to Library Island: Sherlonya Turner, Ann Arbor District Library

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Library Island, the participatory activity which reaches the parts other professional development cannot reach, is here! You can read more and download your copy of the free, CC-licensed PDF file here.

I’m featuring some accounts of the Island from people who have attended Island sessions, or run Islands of their own, to give you a better sense of what it means to take part in, or even organise, your own Library Island. 

Today, Sherlonya Turner of Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) in Michigan, USA joins us for her account of running Library Island. Sherlonya and her colleagues ran a tailor-made session at LibCamp 2019, a professional development event for regional librarians hosted by AADL.

Sherlonya is a great public library leader, and, in her regular contributions to AADL’s culture blog Pulp, one of Libraryland’s most talented writers. Here’s what happened when she took charge of Library Island earlier this year.

When Managers Cut Loose: Being Playful with Colleagues

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Clemson University Visits Library Island

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This week, South Carolina’s Clemson University Libraries became the latest organisation to visit Library Island, with their own lively adaptation of the free, CC-licensed core toolkit.

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This #TuesdayTrip we walked over to the Hendrix Student Center for our Professional Development Day, a chance for our employees to learn the ins and outs of other library job positions through a professional development game called Library Island. Each employee was assigned to a library with a new job position or role such as librarian, tech, dean, student, etc. Everyone was then given a task and had to find the corresponding person to help them with it, making the room operate like a library. Through this game, employees gained insight into their coworkers’ jobs and experienced both the good aspects and the challenges. After the game, we discussed what we learned. One employee said she now understands the demand placed on our financial officer, while someone who’s island was located far from the others realized how distance can impact an employee’s job, like those at our off-site Library Depot. Many employees said they realized they had a lot of assumptions about their coworkers’ jobs and the activity helped interpret them more clearly. But of course we couldn’t play a game and not have some fun! Stay tuned for this week’s #LibraryShenanigans to find out how we overthrew the dean, caught crooks stealing from Special Collections, declared a new library, ran out of books, and met a flamingo named Clarence. #NextTimeOnDragonBallZ . . . #clemson #clemsonlibraries #librariesofclemson #librariesofinstagram #library #cooperlibrary #academiclibrary #clemsonuniversity #southcarolina #clemsontigers #books #reading #learning #tuesday #trip #vacation #holiday #adventure #woohoo #employee #work #beach #island #hawaii #libraryisland

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“Each employee was assigned to a library with a new job position or role such as librarian, tech, dean, student, etc. Everyone was then given a task and had to find the corresponding person to help them with it, making the room operate like a library. Through this game, employees gained insight into their coworkers’ jobs and experienced both the good aspects and the challenges.

After the game, we discussed what we learned. One employee said she now understands the demand placed on our financial officer, while someone who’s island was located far from the others realized how distance can impact an employee’s job, like those at our off-site Library Depot.

Many employees said they realized they had a lot of assumptions about their coworkers’ jobs and the activity helped interpret them more clearly. But of course we couldn’t play a game and not have some fun!”

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Find out more and follow their Island adventures by visiting Clemson Libraries on Instagram, or read more about running a Library Island of your very own.

Library Island Is Here!

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Welcome to Library Island!

This interactive training activity helps participants to explore strategy, innovation, and the messy business of working with communities. We’ve spent the last two years perfecting Library Island with university staff, health workers, museum professionals, students, and, yes, librarians.

The free CC-licensed print-and-play kit is now available for download in PDF format. Feel free to adopt it, adapt it, and make your own visit to Library Island.

Read more about Library Island, and what it has done for professionals all over the world, here.

Auf der Trauminsel der Bibliotheken: Bibliothekskongress Leipzig

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I’ll be at next month’s Bibliothekskongress in Leipzig, a gathering of German-speaking librarians and information professionals. If you’re attending, come say hello and talk Library Island – or catch me online.

Ändern sich Bibliotheken zu schnell oder nicht schnell genug?

Was bieten wir einer Welt, die sich schnell und radikal zu verändern scheint?

Wie sieht gute Führung in der Bibliothek des 21. Jahrhunderts aus?

Wie können wir für Zeiten der Veränderung planen?

Um antworten zu finden, besuchen Sie Library Island.

Library Island simuliert fünf Jahre im Leben von Bibliotheken in einem kleinen Land. Die Spieler übernehmen die Rolle von Bibliothekaren, Regierungs- und Gemeindemitgliedern.

Die Spieler verhandeln politische Konflikte und soziale Herausforderungen (oder sogar Naturkatastrophen!) und passen das Spiel dann an ihre eigenen lokalen Probleme.

Es ist ein einfaches Spiel, das nur mit Papier und Stiften gespielt wird, aber es ermöglicht den Spielern, komplexe Szenarien und unbequeme Themen zu besprechen.

Ich habe Library Island entwickelt, um Organisationen zu unterstützen, ihre Vision und Mission für die Zukunft zu definieren und umzusetzen. Library Island schafft Raum für die Erkundung einer ungewissen oder schwierigen Zukunft und hilft Mitarbeitern, Führungskräften und Trägern einen strategischen Standpunkt zu entwickeln.

Man kann Library Island als eigenständigen Workshop oder als Teil eines umfassenderen strategischen Prozesses nutzen. Es ist spielerisch, belebend, zum Nachdenken anregend und macht sogar Spaß!

Learn more about Library Island here.

What exactly is Library Island anyway?

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I’ve spent a fair chunk of the last two years working on something called “Library Island”. You might have seen photos, videos, or social media posts appearing online as university staff, health workers, museum professionals, students, and, yes, librarians take part in this interactive training activity.

Later this year, a free CC-licensed print-and-play kit for Library Island will be released, so that people anywhere can take this activity and use it with their institutions, companies, and communities.

But what exactly is Library Island? Read on to find out… Read more →

Drink Your Way To Better Librarianship

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“If thinking differently was going to make me a better runner, I could do it sitting in the pub.”

Charlie Spedding missed a train, bought a beer, and changed his life.

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The English marathon runner, a pharmacist by trade, found himself in a pub forty years ago, pondering how to make the big time.

“I had committed myself to running when I walked away from my father’s business, but I didn’t seem to know how I was going to fulfil whatever potential I had. All I had done was burn my bridges, and I felt unsure about how to make progress.”

All lives come to turning points, by choice or by chance or by decisions over which we have no control. So how do we make the most of them? What options are available to us?

And can we drink our way to better librarianship?

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