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.