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.