Shortcuts to Greatness

Karen Hyman from South Jersey Cooperative - speaker.

All of us are here together for this program to learn what the shortcuts are to greatness. The premise is that excellence and a history of support are not working as well as they used to. Smoke and mirrors and inertia are not working as well as they used to. for many, fun is in short, at least shorter supply. Moving toward greatness was never more necessary, rewarding, or entertaining.

10 Steps
1. Great Libraries Have Great Leadership - great leaders set an inspiring and effective vision (one that you can keep in mind), are confident they can notice and fix things that don't work (willing to try things), take notice, have courage, ask questions, and model behavior. They are high in emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills) which can be developed through experience. Leaders set the bar high for yourself and learn all you can; find coaches among mentors, coaches and staff; notice and eliminate energy depleters; and remember that courage is a choice, not a personality trait. If you want to have great leaders, remember - their greatness is in your self-interest, their leadership skills are developed through your obvseration and feedback, perfect leaders are like perfect mothers (they're fictional).

2. Visionary leadership relies on wonderful staff - there is no alternative. You want passionate enthusiastic staff, so - hire them, inspire liberate and cherish them (your front line staff are your heroes). Make passion and enthusiasm part of your leadership. Hire people who will - engage well with others and are passionate about providing excellent service, are team players, think quickly on their feet, and are excited about the prospect of growing and changing the environment. What motivates people - the chance to work with great colleagues you can respect and learn from; clear meaningful goals, inspire them. People are motivated because they do things that matter, because they are interesting, and because they are part of something important (Dan Pink).

3. Visionary leadership and great staff can create a great culture. Culture is how and organization operates supports innovation, flexibility, and quality execution, supports effective teamwork, and avoids rigidity in politics, mediocrity, complacency, and the aura of failure. Does your library have a vision or driving statement? Values are what we value - values are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go; are shown in how we treat the people who work in our libraries, those who walk in the door and those who don't use the library (yet). Organizations need and inspire an effective vision - doesn't have to be innovative or original but is short and focused on the community. To build a great culture - involve staff, users and non-users; set an inspiring vision; develop core competencies and expectations of everyone at all levels; reinforce the vision on your website.

4. The Library belongs to the customers. Visionary leadership and great staff are there to make the experience that the customers love. There is not alternative. if we are not the public library the people want - that's our fault. We need to adjust to our customers. Customer focus means reaching out and continuing renewal. Your library is as friendly as your least friendly employee. Customer focused libraries get to first base - ditch the rules/burn the signs, observe and respond to cultural shifts, choose your fights, rethink your fines or at least change your message, show respect and affection for their customers.

5. Great libraries practice rapid recovery. Good processes help talented people get more done. Bad processes try to prevent recoverable mistakes. A loyal customer feels great about dealing with you, has needs that are consistently met, will proactively talk about you. Just fix problems quickly. (Netflix) Vancouver PL says "library should be an expression of its community's vision and creativity..." Houston PL - respond to any customer problems within 3 days, low hanging fruit they handle right away, work on uniformity of response, if staff makes a change and the customer goes away happy all they do is just review policy.

6. Great Libraries seize opportunity. Develop and maintain connections with those who share constituencies and be there when the chips are down. They'll remember. Houston PL (during a national disaster when everything was closed by city employees had to go to work) offered free day care for two weeks for all city employees.

7. Great libraries have heart and soul. Emotional bonding - a heartfelt connection - makes it 3 times more likely people will stay loyal. The ideal flawless service, is delivered in an atmosphere of caring.

8. Great libraries have a sense of humor and show it in their building, website, and publications. Anythink - horror bookmarks, romance posters, etc.

9. Great libraries look cool. Are there shortcuts to looking cool? - Merchandise. Paint. Hang a banner. Put some big pictures of people on your website and in your library. Do a wordle at www.wordle.net. Smile...now... Reconfigure to fit people's needs (Paco Underhill). Change your look online - have a cool looking website (use real patrons doing real things in your library with some of their real quotes to advertise what you do). Change your look - staff shirts, jackets, etc. that fir your style and send your message. Smile. Your library is as cool as your least friendly public service employee.

10. Great libraries don't wait to be great. 5 things you can start today.
- Set a simple, inspiring and usable vision, share it with your customers and potential customers, and make it the touchstone for all your other choices.
- Develop core competencies/expectations of everyone at all levels to match that vision in terms of enthusiasm, flexibility, etc. Define the job that you want done and celebrate what you want to foster.
- Practice rapid recovery. Notice what's not working and respond quickly to customer and staff feedback.
- Change your look. Increase the coolness factor of your staff, your space, and your website.
- Go the the extra mile. Put heart and soul and spirit of fun into your library service.

As usual, Karen Hyman is action packed and full of energy. Another inspiring talk...