The 80/20 Librarian: Focusing on the 20% that matters

In reading Leaders: Myth and Reality by General Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, and Jason Mangone there are three myths that society associates with leadership.

These are the Formulaic Myth, the Attribution Myth, and the Results Myth.

The Formulaic Myth makes the error in assuming that a certain prescribed set of required leadership qualities or traits is needed for a leader’s success. If a leader has this winning “formula” then they’ll be a successful leader. The problem with this, as pointed out by the authors, is that truly successful leadership needs to be adapted to changing circumstances and times. Leadership in the authors’ view is very dynamic (not static) and is clearly not about possessing a one size fits all strategy for success. Leaders must be continually flexible in their approaches to multifaceted problems that they have never faced before.

The Attribution Myth is dangerous in that the perceived results (good or bad) that happen under a leader’s watch largely ignore the role of followers and group dynamics. In short, all results are thought to be directly derived from the particular leader. In the extreme this can lead to what the authors refer to as a type of hero worship.  It is better to think of leadership existing within a “network of relationships” (page 398).

The Results Myth makes the point that leadership is all about moving an organization toward beneficial outcomes. In reality, the authors argue that the symbolic values of the particular leader may actually be just as valuable, if not more so, than their production of results. The words, style, and appearance of a leader can be extremely important. “The truth is that when we look closely, we see leadership as much in what our leaders symbolize as in what they accomplish (page 378).”

Another concept that is worth noting is the suggestions that the writers give for followers.

“Followers are better served in pushing information, feedback, and recommendations up to leaders, rather than waiting for decisions and guidance to flow down. In simple terms, followers should operate via a push system rather than a pull system. One logical extension of this concept is the requirement for followers to practice reverse accountability, or the process of followers’ holding leaders accountable. This view of leadership suggests that a leader’s operating parameters are often defined by followers, and that the real efficacy in a leadership system lies with the followers. Thus followers should be more willing to shape and confine their leaders’ styles (page 400).”

I like the following commentary on the training of leaders. “Rather, they (leaders) should be equipped with an understanding of leadership as a system, see themselves as the enablers of that system, and learn how to adjust their approach based on the needs of that system (page 400).”

Also worth pointing out is the possibility for reformed views of leadership to improve the collective good.

“It becomes possible to resurrect the expectation that it is the function of leadership to improve the overall progress of humanity. Too often, results-based leadership has been focused on the bottom line, trying to manage a perceived trade-off between the mission and taking care of people. Through this new conceptual lens, we dispense with such either-or thinking. Rather, the two become positively correlated, and we can more easily see how societal prosperity is linked to workforce fulfillment, and how unit effectiveness is linked to morale. Redefining leadership as the enablement of a human system allows for the relinkage of prosperity and productivity in a more positive way (pages 400-401).”

I just came across a recent example of the mentoring manager cited in Richard Koch’s book the 80/20 Manager. Koch’s basic premise with the mentoring manager is that, “When people take an interest in us, we thrive. The mentoring manager takes an interest in his or her people (page 85).”

In her book Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama discusses the impact of her visit to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school in the U.K. “An economist from a British University would later put out a study that looked at the test performances of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson students, finding that their overall scores jumped significantly after I’d started connecting with them- the equivalent of moving from a C average to an A. Any credit for improvement really belonged to the girls, their teachers, and the daily work they did together, but it also affirmed the idea that kids will invest more when they feel they’re being invested in. I understood that there was power in showing children my regard.” (page 608 of large print edition).

The visit to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school in the U.K. is a good example of a mentoring manager and the positive benefits of taking a genuine interest in supporting people.

Let’s think of ways that we all might be mentoring managers to others.

Just completed a new post entitled Empowering Others.

I am thinking of blogging about some important life lessons that I have learned going forward. To keep it simple I will just blog about one life lesson at a time.

Another year of blogging and librarianship is about to pass yet again, so here is one successful thing that I have truly learned over this time:

1. In terms of supervision, empowering others has proven to be a great asset again and again. Empowerment immediately moves the supervisor away from micromanagement to a position of allowing the employee to flourish on their own. However, empowerment does not mean just leaving the employee alone to participate in a veritable guessing game as to what is effective or successful action. I accomplish empowerment in these steps:
   • Have a discussion as to how the employee’s gifts and interests contribute to the success of the organization or group. I always find that employees have an expertise or skill for some important work that I will never have or will never be nearly as good at. This is a good thing! Everyone should realize that have something unique to positively contribute! This understanding allows the supervisor to internalize the fact that the group or organization can be far more successful using everyone’s gifts, instead of just relying on the supervisor to force action.
   • Once finished discussing the employee’s gifts/interests (excellent employees often proactively bring their good ideas to a supervisor without the supervisor needing to ask, but if the employee is hesitant to initiate conversation the supervisor should reach out), the supervisor should ask the employee what they can do to help the employee succeed. I often ask an employee, what resources can I acquire or what support can I give to help you in this project? This question alone will allow the supervisor to learn and to gain the employee’s confidence/trust by providing resources and other support even if it is just moral support. I find that, as a supervisor, material resources are generally easy to acquire (unless something outlandishly expensive is deemed necessary). Another relatively easy resource to give employees is needed information. This allows the employee to have a context by which to place their work in.
   • The supervisor should then allow the employee time and space to work on their project with the understanding that the employee can go to the supervisor at any time to ask for assistance. Upon completion of the task the supervisor should check in with the employee to see how things went and what can be improved. Often a compliment or congratulations from the supervisor to the employee is in order. It is important to give feedback. If something went totally wrong, the supervisor should consider this a learning opportunity and ask the employee what they would do differently going forward. Learning from experience leads to wisdom. Great learning occurs more often from failures than from successes.
   • Quotes from business leaders to support empowerment
     1. Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft said, “The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.” See http://sourcesofinsight.com/lessons-learned-from-bill-gates/
     2. Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4 Hour Work Week on page 110 notes, “It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them. People are smarter than you think. Give them a chance to prove themselves.”
     3. General Stanley McChrystal has several quotes from his book Team of Teams that I find useful. I will refer readers to excerpts of my post from three years ago.
     1. McChrystal’s decentralized managerial philosophy went something like this (page 214), “”If something supports our effort, as long as it is not immoral or illegal,” you could do it. Soon, I found that the question I most often asked my force was “What do you need?”
     2. Page 214, “On the whole, our initiative-which we call “empowered execution” met with tremendous success. Decisions came more quickly, critical in a fight where speed was essential to capturing enemies and preventing attacks. More important, and more surprising, we found that, even as speed increased and we pushed authority further down, the quality of decisions actually went up.”
     3. Page 216, “In the old model, subordinates provided information and leaders disseminated commands. We reversed it: we had our leaders provide information so that subordinates, armed with context, understanding, and connectivity, could take the initiative and make decisions.”
     4. Page 228, “”Thank you” became my most important phrase, interest and enthusiasm my most powerful behaviors. For a younger member of the command, even if the brief had been terrible, I would compliment the report.”

I’d like to share my favorite quotes from We Fed an Island by José Andrés with Richard Wolffe. I enjoyed learning how the chefs employed a variety of resources from school kitchens to food trucks to effectively respond en masse to the food and water crisis in Puerto Rico just after Hurricane Maria. From a management standpoint the lesson I learned was to utilize any material resources you have, communicate your needs to any existing partnerships you have, endear then recruit people to your cause, and keep plugging away by creatively improvising as the situation demands.

“With a couple of pieces of bread, you can easily put something in between and make a good sandwich. In a moment of real need, a simple sandwich looks like heaven. And if you feed the people, you are creating an army of first responders. If you look after people in their time of need, they become the most important and effective response: they become volunteers.” (Page 77)

“Our expertise was not just in cooking, and we couldn’t be the only ones to cook the food if we truly wanted to feed the island. Our expertise was in the whole food chain: from understanding what people wanted, to establishing where hungry people could find the food; from securing reliable supplies of ingredients, to distributing that food to the kitchens. We were matching supplies with needs, on an island where power and communications were still very unreliable. We had no idea how anyone had done this before, or how the official powers were planning to do it now. But we solved the problems as they popped up, as chefs do, and we just started cooking.” (Page 124)

“Our solution to the challenge of creating a meal that was easy to transport and stayed edible for long periods was a simple, old-school idea: the ham and cheese sandwich. I have created many avant-garde dishes as a chef but there are few meals I’m prouder of than the hundreds of thousands of sandwiches we made in Puerto Rico.” (Page 136)

“Whether the meals cost a few dollars or a few hundred dollars, you do your best with the ingredients you have. In the end, it’s the same thing.” (Page 196)

At the end of We Fed an Island, on page 235, is a reference to Tim Sullivan’s article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, “Embracing Complexity,”. Sullivan’s example of an ant colony is briefly discussed on page 235. “Each ant works with local information, and has no big picture of what’s going on. It has no plan, and no obvious leadership, yet together the colony achieves incredible feats of organization and engineering. What we did was embrace complexity every single second. Not planning, not meeting, just improvising. The old school wants you to plan, but we needed to feed the people.”

“If we had a plan, it was to be united to achieve as much as possible.” (Page 236)

“What works in a disaster is localized decision-making.” (Page 240)

I think the library community should be aware of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus

Libraries could benefit from looking at this since they are so connected to education.

The website states, “The Lennon Bus is highly adaptable, designed to provide students, their schools and communities with performances, hands-on demonstrations, remote recordings, and studio sessions customized for their needs, levels of experience and interest. The Bus travels the country visiting schools, music and technology conferences and events, and partners with communities and media outlets to call attention to the importance of arts and digital media education.“

I recently came across a passage while reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

On page 57 Cain discusses research from Adam Grant

The summary, on introverted and extroverted leaders, is as follows:

Introverts do really well leading initiative takers

Extroverts are better at leading passive workers

I never knew that the leader’s success is possibly related not only to the leader’s own personality but also to the personality or disposition of the leader’s followers.

My favorite quotes on this topic were:

“Because of their inclination to listen to others and lack of interest in dominating social situations, introverts are more likely to hear and implement suggestions. Having benefited from the talents of their followers, they are then likely to motivate them to be even more proactive. Introverted leaders create a virtuous circle of proactivity, in other words.”

“Extroverts on the other hand can be so intent on putting their own stamp on events, that they risk losing others’ good ideas along the way and allowing workers to lapse into passivity. But with their natural ability to inspire, extroverted leaders are better at getting results from more passive workers.”

Earlier in the year I paid tribute to author Peter Mayle. As Bastille Day is almost here come July 14, I thought I would let readers know about the recent publication of Mayle’s final work entitled My 25 Years in Provence. I have gotten through the first several chapters and am really enjoying it.

Shannon Ables’ blog the Simply Luxurious Life has a very well done post on My 25 Years in Provence. It gives a potentially interested reader a good glimpse of what to expect without giving away much.

Those of us in the library industry following the trend of the implementation of passport services will want to pay attention to Yvonne Wenger’s Baltimore Sun article from June 4, 2018 entitled Baltimore’s Pratt Library Goes Fine Free Foe Overdue Books

While overdue fines will be eliminated, replacement charges will still be issued to those customers who never return checked out items.

It is interesting to note that the revenue incurred by fines will need to be made up for budgetary reasons. What service is very likely to be implemented to make up the shortfall of dollars? Passport Services! As Wenger writes, “She (Pratt Library CEO Heidi Daniel) is considering adding revenue-generating services, such as accepting passport applications, to help offset the loss.”

$100,000 is the dollar benchmark that will need to be recovered and I am 95% confident that the Pratt system will implement passport services in the next 6 to 12 months if not sooner. I use a 95% confidence level to account for a 5% chance of error.

Thus, we have one of the first articles that points to a direct relationship between the forgoing of fine revenue and the implementation of passport services to recover a library system’s lost revenue once fines are abandoned.

My professional opinion is that we will see this trend continue. Automatic renewals of checked out items, the increasing number of electronic materials which automatically return making them fine-less by their very existent, less purchasing of physical circulating materials, the labor involved in collecting fines with collection agencies, and a potential movement to go fine-free completely are driving an interest in passport services to recoup a revenue stream which is no longer as strong as it once was.

Well, ALA Connect is now officially up and running! The Public Library Association’s (PLA) Immigration and Citizenship Interest Group might be a good place to start a discussion on the passport services work that libraries are carrying out across the country.

Note that PLA personal membership is required to join an interest group and you must be logged into your ALA Connect account to access the page.