Genoa Public Library Case Study

Nicki has quite a challenge set out for her. I don't envy her the task of improving the organizational culture of the Genoa Public Library which she is taking on along with a whole new position (a promotion!). Of course the project has great possibilities for making a huge difference in Genoa PL which overall sounds like a forward thinking organization and has a bright future ahead. So in that way it is pretty exciting.

1. How would you proceed with managing the culture project? What would you do first?

Nicki has a big and important project to oversee. I suggest her first step is to do some reading and research about change management and specifically about leading cultural change. Unless she has taken the APLL course her education and experience may not have led her to look at Kotter's 8 steps or other organized and valuable ways of approaching organizational change. Once she has some understanding of the topic she needs to formulate a strategy of how she wants to proceed with this project. She can't plan out everything but it would be best to have an overall plan with the buy in of the CEO, since he is the sponsor of the project. 

Once Nicki's overall plan is established she needs to have a clear explanation of why the change in organizational culture is necessary. She needs to have a picture in her mind (and be able to clearly explain it to others) of what, in general, the changed workplace will accomplish. Why does the library want to go there? The "vision" needs to look attractive for everyone (or at least most) so that Nicki can get most to support the changes necessary. It is unlikely that Nicki can develop this by herself so I suggest she work with a couple other people to find a compelling vision and of course she needs the buy in of the CEO.

Now that Nicki's compelling and urgent vision for change is established Nicki needs to "take her show on the road". It appears from the case study that she has credibility within the organization and she may need to cash some of that in. It will help her that she has worked in several areas and levels within the library. Hopefully she can enlist the help of the CEO and possibly other credible members of management to share her compelling and urgent vision for organizational change.

2. How would you select the participants for the team?

Selecting the right team members is very important to accomplishing the goals of this project. Nicki needs to identify people within the organization who are leaders and have influence with other staff members. She will need people who can "sign on" to the vision of a new organizational culture and are willing to actively support that vision.

Since the Genoa Public Library has no less that ten (10) major projects being undertaken at this time the need for leaders within the organization is going to be very high. It would be sensible for the leaders of those ten projects and other senior leaders to get together and identify which staff members might fit best within the various projects. Otherwise some staff may be inundated with committee requests and others may be overlooked who may well have been valuable committee members. Hopefully people would be able to volunteer for committees that interest them but this could be a bit tricky since not all individuals might be suitable. Perhaps a combination of the identification and volunteer models could be used to ensure the best fit and a successful committee.

It would be essential to include a staff member from the department that struggles with change. Nicki will need to work hard with that group to ensure that someone can be involved and contribute to the success of the committee. With a positive role model in their midst (someone with credibility within their group) the team will hopefully be able to see the positives that will come with this change. It will be easier to tailor the message to this group by including someone from it but Nicki will have to be careful she doesn't add a toxic element to her committee that has a big enough job ahead of it already. Nicki also needs to include someone from the Milverton branch on the committee. She may need to get creative to find them some assistance to free up some staff time to participate. It seems to me that Milverton will be an easy sell if they can see how a culture change will help their situation (and I think that argument could easily be made) but someone who knows the current difficulties would definitely be an asset to the team.

3. How would you diagnose the cultural and organizational issues?

Apparently the culture of Genoa Library needs to change from reactive to proactive, from conservative to innovative, from library focused to customer focused and from process and transaction oriented to library experience oriented.

Given that Nicky has experience in various parts and levels of the organization she may already have a pretty good idea of some of the issues that are underlying that list of needed changes. She can try a variety of methods to gather data such as informal discussions with employees in small groups or department meetings, or more formal anonymous surveys of employees. She should have discussions with supervisors and managers as well to gather information. She should especially try to consult the influencers of the organization even if they are not on side with the change plan as yet. Even if this information doesn't pinpoint issues it can give Nicki valuable insight into how staff are feeling about the culture and will help her shape the roll out plan in the future.

Once the committee is organized, functioning and onside with the vision they can sort through the data that has been collected and provide more of their own. This will allow the committee to identify and prioritize key areas to address that could result in "quick wins" while the overall plan moves forward.