When I read Seth Godin's musings about how the space where you do "what you do" impacts what gets done, I immediately thought of the room at MPOW where we have nearly all of our meetings.
We have informational all-staff meetings there. We have committee meetings there. We have brainstorming sessions there. We have big meetings there. We have small meetings there. Basically, if it happens at MPOW, there's a good chance it's happening in this room.
If you ask me to describe this room, I would say this about it's physical attributes: it's well lit with sturdy tables and reasonably comfortable chairs. It has a pretty good AV setup: computer, overhead projector, screen. I would also say that it's also usually always cold.
In the closing lines of his post, Godin says "I think we can train ourselves to associate certain places with certain outcomes."
I think Godin's right. If I'm honest, I associate this particular room with certain outcomes and that colors how I feel when I go there.
An anecdote:
One of the meetings that I attend regularly has met in this particular room, or it's Far Campus equivalent, for as many years as I've been going to the meeting. One day, we when we tried to use the Far Campus room, we found that we had been displaced by another event. The meeting moved to a "lounge" that had no tables and couches and wing back chairs.
You would not be surprised to learn that the meeting had an entirely different feel.
Godin's nugget about places and outcomes made me think about how when we want to innovate, we shouldn't meet in the same room where ideas go to die by committee.
So try a new space or a new place. Or, maybe take a baby step and start by rearranging the furniture in your meeting space. Shake things up and, in the process, change people's expectations about what the outcome will be.
Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.
Showing posts with label leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leadership. Show all posts
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Creating change by directing elephants and riders
For some reason, I've been reading a lot of "business books" lately. I read Re:Work a couple of weeks ago and I just finished Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
My short review of both books: Both of them were well-written, thought provoking books that will change the way you perceive work and change respectively. Do yourself a favor and check them out, but only if you're ready to have your mind blown and your way of doing things forever altered.
In Shift, the Heaths talk about how our brains are divided into two distinct parts: the rational part (the rider) and the emotional part (the elephant). In order to create change that sticks, you have to make a compelling case for change to both parts of the brain. Additionally, the Heaths assert, you have to shape the path for both the elephant and the rider to be successful.
Change, the Heaths assert, doesn't happen until you can do all three things.
I thought of a lot of ways that I could apply this to my life. Then I started thinking about how this process works (or doesn't work) in libraries.
Despite how often you hear librarians complain about the glacial rate of change in libraries, I don't think that libraries are uniquely dysfunctional when it comes to change.
There area lot of people who have been doing certain things for a long time and are deeply invested in those processes--even when they don't work anymore. This is true in every area of the library, but let's focus on cataloging since this is a cataloging-related blog.
We've been doing the same process for at least 30 years, right? AACR and AACR2 have switched up the game some, as have advances in technology, but we've been producing bibliographic metadata for a while now.
Think about how many things have changed--shelf ready processing, programming languages that allow us to repurpose publisher metadata, web scale discovery systems--and then think about how resistant we, as a group, are to change.
This will never work. We can't do that here. It's too expensive. It doesn't meet our needs.
Sound familiar?
We are so invested in the way of doing things that work for us, that getting the elephant and the rider down the new path seems far beyond what we can do. Even if my elephant and rider say 'let's do this!,' I still have to convince the riders and elephants of everyone else in my department.
Change is hard. I know it, you know it, and the Heath Brothers know it. But that doesn't mean that change isn't worth doing. In fact, I would argue that change is the only way that we, as catalogers, are going to stay relevant.
Take the time to evaluate which changes make the most sense for your organization and then create a compelling argument for making that change. Make sure your argument appeals to both the rider and elephant of those you have to convince.
Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome
My short review of both books: Both of them were well-written, thought provoking books that will change the way you perceive work and change respectively. Do yourself a favor and check them out, but only if you're ready to have your mind blown and your way of doing things forever altered.
In Shift, the Heaths talk about how our brains are divided into two distinct parts: the rational part (the rider) and the emotional part (the elephant). In order to create change that sticks, you have to make a compelling case for change to both parts of the brain. Additionally, the Heaths assert, you have to shape the path for both the elephant and the rider to be successful.
Change, the Heaths assert, doesn't happen until you can do all three things.
I thought of a lot of ways that I could apply this to my life. Then I started thinking about how this process works (or doesn't work) in libraries.
Despite how often you hear librarians complain about the glacial rate of change in libraries, I don't think that libraries are uniquely dysfunctional when it comes to change.
There area lot of people who have been doing certain things for a long time and are deeply invested in those processes--even when they don't work anymore. This is true in every area of the library, but let's focus on cataloging since this is a cataloging-related blog.
We've been doing the same process for at least 30 years, right? AACR and AACR2 have switched up the game some, as have advances in technology, but we've been producing bibliographic metadata for a while now.
Think about how many things have changed--shelf ready processing, programming languages that allow us to repurpose publisher metadata, web scale discovery systems--and then think about how resistant we, as a group, are to change.
This will never work. We can't do that here. It's too expensive. It doesn't meet our needs.
Sound familiar?
We are so invested in the way of doing things that work for us, that getting the elephant and the rider down the new path seems far beyond what we can do. Even if my elephant and rider say 'let's do this!,' I still have to convince the riders and elephants of everyone else in my department.
Change is hard. I know it, you know it, and the Heath Brothers know it. But that doesn't mean that change isn't worth doing. In fact, I would argue that change is the only way that we, as catalogers, are going to stay relevant.
Take the time to evaluate which changes make the most sense for your organization and then create a compelling argument for making that change. Make sure your argument appeals to both the rider and elephant of those you have to convince.
Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome
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