Leadership Practices
I found Mintzberg's article insightful and quite practical. His thoughts certainly relate closely to the four leadership practices mentioned in the assignment.

1. Making Intelligent Decisions
     Mintzberg talks about the Manager being the focal point of information and the fact that a Manager has more information than subordinates. Information is the basic input to decision making. I found this quote interesting and very true:

There are two interesting features about these development projects at the CEO level. First, these projects do not involve single decisions or even unified clusters of decisions. Rather, they emerge as a series of small decisions and actions sequenced over time. Apparently, chief executives prolong each project both to fit it into a busy, disjointed schedule, and so that they can comprehend complex issues gradually.

It paints a picture of decision making as small steps and not one grandious sweeping decision. I find that  often to be true and it is why Inspiring and Holding the Vision is so important in managers so that decisions follow the the path that the leader wishes to follow.

2. Inspiring and Holding the Vision

Mintzberg defines two roles of the Manager that are related to this practice. He says that Managers have the Figurehead role in the Interpersonal roles he defines and in Informational roles the role of Spokesperson. He feels that communication (both formal and informal) is a key role of the Manager and as such this practices is central.


3. Enbracing strategic and purposeful change
     This relates to the roles that Mintzberg calls Decision roles, both the Entreprenuer and the Resource Allocator. Looking for and ensuring implementation of good ideas. Because the Manager makes the final decision about resource allocation he can ensure that projects that are promoted. 

4. Lifelong learners who see mistakes as learning experiences
    Mintzberg makes it clear near the end of the article that it is essential to be introspective in order to learn and he provides a list of 14 Self Study questions for Managers. All the questions require the Manager to review what has happened in the past and ensure that an optimal result has occured and if not to change the future approach to similar situations. Mintzberg assumes that Managers are Lifelong learners because he sees it as an essential practice.

My favourite idea in the article is :

 

The manager is challenged to gain control of his or her own time by turning obligations into advantages and by turning those things he or she

wishes to do into obligations.

I love the idea of turning obligations into advantages as he so clearly lays out in the first part of the paper. I am going to try to focus on that as my major take away from this reading.

Key Concepts from the Planning Classroom Session

There were so many great concepts and ideas in the Planning Classroom session with Rebecca that it is hard to pin it down to just one or two. I guess the area that stuck with the most is the concept of Community Stakeholders. It seems apparent but I had not really thought clearly in these terms before. It is essential not only to identify the key stakeholders for the library but to clarify what our relationship is with those stakeholders and look at our alignment with their goals and objectives. We need to think about other organizations in the community and how the library is "competitive" with them and how we can align with them. Thinking in terms of how the Library can plan a future that considers where community stakeholders want the community to be and other community organization visions makes a lot of sense. Nothing is done in isolation and to garner support Community Stakeholders are essential.

The other concept that struck me as important is the idea of outcome measures. While our Library has been moving in the direction of measuring our success this way I think it is more important than I had realized to make this shift. The Library is no longer a "self evident social good" to everyone and showing the positive outcomes of our services is more important than ever. To include the expected outcomes and how they will be measured strikes me as essential to the planning process for any Library.

Planning
I really enjoy planning, especially strategic planning, because it is a chance to be creative and optimistic about the future of the library and to have some input into what it might look like.

What 3 things do you want to know or be able to do at the end of this planning course? What will make this course particularly useful for you?

One of the challenging things about planning for me is creating ways to measure our success (or our failure). Planning always brings with it the need to create ways to see if you have met your goals and how you are progressing. Without a concrete way to see if we are "where we want to be", strategic planning cannot be as successful. Its easy enough to measure circulation or walkin traffic but these don't necessarily completely reflect the success or failure of our new directions.

Another major challenge with strategic planning, is defining and deciding what activity or service to let go. This often means realocating budget resources. It seems that we are always pulled in two (or more) directions. We want to move forward and make the library a better, more relevant community place but there are expectations from our current (and very supportive) clients to continue to provide the services that we have always provided. In between we have staff who are trying to do more with the same (or sometime fewer) resources. The ability to effectively "sunset" services at the right time (with the least pain) is something I struggle with.

I also struggle with public input and its role in strategic planning. One of the articles pointed out that loyal clients most often don't usually envision a "different" library (just a "better" one). I find this statement to be true but struggle with the amount and type of client input that we need to solicit in order to make our strategic plan the best it can be. 

Leadership Strengths and Development
I see myself as an articulate, inclusive leader that has a ability to listen and foster ideas and co-operative decision making with others. I feel that my areas for leadership development are in compellingly articulating our vision, especially in the area of consciously sharing stories. Because of my cirrent position I don't have much experience with media relations or creating relationships with community leaders. I would like to develop my skills in this area. In the area of developing staff, I think I need to focus more on identifying and developing leadership skills in others and giving them projects and feedback to help them improve. As I develop further leadership skills I hope to become more aware of and deliberate in articulating our library vision, helping people in their leadership quest and confidently speak to media and community leaders about the library.

The reading I've done on leadership only scratches the surface of what is available. It seems that everyone has a view on leadership and there are almost an infinite number of ways to go about "improving" your leadership skills. Some of them are even contradictory. One of the things that struck me in this reading is the difference between managing and leadership. This is something that was brought to my attention a couple of years ago. It seems to me that both sets of tasks (leadership and managing) have to be completed but they often take quite a different skill set, this does make it challenging. I also noticed that several of the articles I read emphasized leadership throughout the organization - not just at the top levels. I like this concept and would like to investigate it further. I was surprised with leadership ideas based on the ideas of new science (Margaret Wheatly is the author who seems to have looked at this). Its certainly a concept I had not thought of nor heard of before. Overall surveying the literature is a bit daunting. Its hard to know where to start or how to make a plan to improve your skills. I think that it might be necessary just to jump in and try some of the techniques and see what seems most relevant to the leadership situations that I face.

What do I want in a mentor?
Having not really decided exactly what my focus for my project will be, I'm not sure what specialty I need in a mentor. However, I think that I need a mentor who will challenge my thinking and make sure that I am not accepting the status quo. A person who has a different approach and background than me would be ideal. I've been at this library thing a while. I need to make sure that I challenge my own assumptions and ask the right questions. This seems to me the best way to learn and grow.

I am a bit behind with this post - technical difficulties. But I'm getting back on track now. Let's see .... my learning style. If had responded to that question a couple of years ago I would have answered that I am a visual learner like a majority of the population - mainly learning by reading. I suspect this because that was the learning style I had been exposed to most often as a student. However in the last couple of years I've come to realize that as an adult I learn in many ways. I definately enjoy learning certain skills kinaesthetically. I learned to be an ILS administrator simply by doing the job. For me, it was the best way to learn that particular skill set! There is no question that I am not a good auditory learner. My husband and son are great auditory learners but I can barely follow an audio book so I don't think that method is my best. I wonder how I made it through University with all those professors lecturing at me.

The discussion about active learning also struck a chord. I do find dialogue with others a useful method of learning as an adult. Learning by doing in this framework made a lot of sense. We often have trainings and courses but I find the information is interesting and potentially useful but if it doesn't get incorporated into action then it fades quickly. An Assertive Communication course I took was a great learning experience because we used case studies and role play. I can hear people groaning but role play really worked in that course. We each had a scenario to react to and the others critiqued the role play based on the topic of the evening. For me, and apparently others in the course, it was a very helpful technique.

I was once more of a reflector. Sitting back and listening to conversations around me and trying to take it all in. As I've got older (and perhaps more impatient) I find myself more of a pragmatist. I like to solve problems and work in the real world rather than with theory.

Learning can be tough as an adult, especially when there is so much that needs to be done just to get through the day but when I've experienced excellent learning situations I appreciate and enjoy it even more than I did as a student. There is so much to learn.

My first blog post

I'm very excited to be participating in the APLL course starting next week! I am a collaborative thinker. I like to discuss ideas and work with a group because usually the product of a group is so much better than the product of a single mind - or at least my mind. In the last few years I have realized the importance of leadership skills specifically in the library profession and have been consciously working to improve mine. Bring on the learning.