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The ink on Innisfil Public Library’s Strategic Plan was barely dry when they made great strides toward their Vision of “sparking ideas to ignite a creative and dynamic community.” How? By launching, that’s right “launching” their Strategic Plan with a community party, complete with an Academy Award. Yep, Oscar - the big, heavy gold guy.
Academy Award winner Colin Chilvers, renowned for his creative visual effects on movies such as Superman, Tommy and X-Men, applauded the Innisfil PL’s strategies: “I like helping people sell their ideas,” he said, “These people are trying to bring different things to the library, not just books. I’m happy to be here; not enough people support the library.”
Colin Chilvers, with his friend "Oscar" speaks at the Innisfil PL's Strategic Plan Launch
The Library’s strategies are to position the Library a hub for discovery and exploration, design and construct creative, collaborative space, develop a strong community presence, and cultivate a “hacker ethic,” and foster a culture of innovation. Their unveiling of the Plan touched on all of their strategies — bringing the community together in a fun Saturday evening, with live music, staff demonstrating their 3D printer and digital repository for community history, and Library alive with conversation, interest and laughter. A local business owner spoke of the recent “Let Us Surprise You” community contest in which the Library partnered with Hardie and Company, a local advertising and branding company, saying “I am continuously impressed with the initiatives of the Innisfil Public Library to unify our communities”.
We’ve always admired
Continue reading Oscar-Winner Launches Innisfil’s Strategic Plan
Jeffrey Phillips at CIL 2012
The 27th annual Computers in Libraries is focusing on Creating Innovative Libraries. Author Jeffrey Phillips talked about relentless innovation and the need to change from BAU (business as usual) to” innovation business as usual”. He illustrated how we have been focusing on quality, efficiency, core competencies and being lean for the last 30 years and although they are good things, they have not been balanced with innovation as they were in the 1970′s. To accomplish innovation business as usual with more emphasis on innovation in organizations he discussed the need for: communication & commitment (demonstrating with words and actions), compensation (if you want people to be innovative you have to reward them for doing so), and culture (creating attitudes, perspectives, and ways of working that sees innovation as important). In addition, new skill sets have to be learned (focusing on customer needs, trend watching, managing innovation). He left the audience with his Fab Four imperatives: create clear innovation goals (& strategies) — he used P&G as an example; begin to define & sustain a process with language, methodologies, culture (understand how it works); rebalance with tools & skills; rework culture, incentives, rewards. If you want more, check out his book, Relentless Innovation, and his blog.
Fantastic! Spring is here — according to today’s Google Doodle, and the cherry blossoms that are now blooming in full force in DC, and the 27the Computers in Libraries which began with lots of workshops today. Later today the opening networking event, Gaming & Gadgets Petting Zoo, provides an opportunity to reconnect, meet, and greet colleagues as well as to try your hand at some fun games (and understand what the young folk love!) and also try out each others’ gadgets. Always a fun activity. Tomorrow brings our morning keynote, Jeffrey Phillips, VP OVO Innovate on Purpose, and author of Relentless Innovation: What Works, What Doesn’t — And What That Means for Your Business.
If you aren’t registered for the conference but are in the DC area, you can take advantage of the free sessions, Cybertours, which are happening in the Exhibit Hall on Wednesday through Friday.
If you aren’t able to join us this year in person in DC, follow the Twitter feed (#CILDC), conference blog (www.Libconf.com) which links to other conference bloggers, and watch for some live streaming with links from the blog! See you in person or online.
This is a follow-up to “EPL: Extraordinary Public Libraries” describing how Edmonton and Halifax Public Libraries are integrating library services into communities. Thanks Ken Williment for alerting me to an article he & Pilar Martinez recently published in the Swedish BIS: bibliotek i samhalle. Ken, Community Development Manager @ Halifax Public Libraries and Pilar, Executive Director Public Services @ Edmonton, wrote Canadian Libraries: Innovating & Creating Inclusive Services. It details the development of their respective community-led services and Halifax’ asset mapping. At a time when many North American public libraries are touring Europe to learn from the innovative libraries there, it’s great to see a European profiling Canadian innovation.
On the one hand, I’m still a bit amazed — ok, a lot amazed — that it has taken us this long to grasp the fact that “community-led” services should be the heart of libraries’ service portfolios. It’s one of those smack-my-forehead-this-is-so-obvious moments for us as a profession and for the library sector. On the other hand, I’m relieved and delighted that we are on the right track — and that Edmonton, Halifax, Vancouver, Regina & other public libraries are leading and willingly helping public libraries along that track to transition their services from librarian-led to community-led.
Edmonton Public Library's Community-Led Toolkit – available for all
Love Seth Godin’s recent post, The Map has been Replaced by the Compass. He says it so well.
“The map keeps getting redrawn, because it’s cheaper than ever to go offroad, to develop and innovate and remake what we thought was going to be next. Technology keeps changing the routes we take to get our projects from here to there. It doesn’t pay to memorize the route, because it’s going to change soon.
The compass, on the other hand, is more important then ever. If you don’t know which direction you’re going, how will you know when you’re off course?
And yet…
And yet we spend most of our time learning (or teaching) the map, yesterday’s map, while we’re anxious and afraid to spend any time at all calibrating our compass.”
Rebecca and I have spent almost 20 years working with organizations to set their direction — we’ve called it direction planning for most of those years (although the term strategic planning keeps sneaking in as it is more familiar in most organizations). Seth is so right, setting direction (often with a vision of a preferred future state) is key to any journey and continues to guide the path taken. Thanks for this post, Seth.
Continue reading Got Direction? Use a Compass not a Map
As libraries continue to push the boundaries on their role and their impact on communities, campuses & organizations, they need to look at other types of institutions & programs for inspiration. Like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s new 13,400 square foot, $15 million Visitors Center complex in Seattle. Thanks to CIO.com for a slideshow of the opening, and this description: “The center includes a number of interactive sections like the Innovation & Inspiration Gallery, where folks can take a “Find Your Skills” quiz or create their own inventions out of Tinker toys and all manner of other objects. Visitors are encouraged to take digital photos of their “ideas” and post them online.“
The press release for the Center explains that once people have completed the “Find Your Skills” quiz to help them identify their own strengths and passions, they proceed to “explore various stations aligned to their strengths that ask them to solve real-world problems and share their solutions with family and friends.
Newsday also highlights the Center’s opening, “In one of the first galleries, a wall of wooden blocks with dates on them can all be flipped to reveal photographs and bits of information. A large wooden globe is fun to spin, but it also works like a computer mouse to sail through a map of the world. Kids could also bypass the interactive displays and go straight to the fun room at the end of the walkway by the windows. There they’ll find games and toys and other hands-on
Continue reading Gates’ Foundation’s Interactive Center: An Inspiration for Libraries?
Years ago I got really excited about “neoteny” when I read Warren Bennis’ book, Geeks & Geezers: How Eras, Values & Defining Moments Shape Leaders (2002). I love the word and the concept, and so does Joichi Ito, the director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, according to this article on innovation in the New York Times. He says, “Neoteny, one of my favorite words, means the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood: idealism, experimentation and wonder. In this new world, not only must we behave more like children, we also must teach the next generation to retain those attributes that will allow them to be world-changing, innovative adults who will help us reinvent the future.” Also, “education is [not] about centralized instruction anymore; rather, it is the process establishing oneself as a node in a broad network of distributed creativity.” Ito is also the general partner of Neoteny Labs.
I have given several talks on why libraries fail, and published an article on the topic, and one of the things I include in developing leaders is “the ability to retain youthful qualities as adults — curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy. Certainly this is the season for it, so strengthen your neoteny!
We’re coming to the end of the year and there are lots of predictions out there for a whole range of technology and trends. Great for big picture thinking and planning for the future. Check out predictions for:
* popular holiday toys — love this list of 20 tested & “Yule Elf approved” tech treasures for the holidays
* enterprise social collaboration software — Forrester predicts $6.4 billion market in 2016
* enterprise IT — Gartner sees CSMI nexus: cloud, social, mobile & info — see quote below
The new driving force behind IT for the foreseeable future is what Plummer [Daryl Plummer, Managing VP & Gartner Fellow] and his associates call the “CSMI Nexus” — comprising cloud, social, mobile and information. The CSMI Nexus forms “a phenomenon that is changing the world as we know it, and certainly changing the IT landscape,” he says. “Cloud is the means of delivery. Social is the behavioral style, the interaction styles. Mobile is the access mechanism. Information is the analytical foundation on which you figure out what decisions to make. You have to build a philosophy around that.
* themes for 2012 from Ross Dawson which I definitely agree with
I am sure there are lots more and I hope you’ll point me toward them but in the meantime, these are ones that crossed my radar today.
Jane Dysart posted this in Change & Innovation, Planning on November 26th, 2011 Nothing like a Gumby to stimulate your imagination. Thanks Google for this doodle! Twist Gumby this way and that, just as you can twist your thoughts this way and that to create something new and different, innovative, exciting. We encourage imaginative thinking with clients and groups as we work with them to envision a future for themselves and their organizations. We recently worked with a wonderful group of teens to imagine a space that would engage them. It came with the usual: comfortable, internet teen lounge with free wifi where you can bring your own computer or use the library’s, do homework or just hang, play video games or board games. But that space also embraced having experts to enhance their learning of photography, writing, art, cooking and sewing! Their vision definitely engaged us. Ask someone today today to imagine a great space, a great job, a great working environment that would engage them — you may be surprised by what creative visions they create!
Thanks to Cindy Gordon who gave me a copy of the book she just wrote with John & JoAnn Girard, Business Goes Virtual: Realizing the Value of Collaboration, Social and Virtual Strategies. I will be interviewing Cindy for the Education Institute Conversations with Leaders series on Tuesday December 6th at 2pm EST. The book begins with a definition of virtual business and the new face of organizations which is being enabled by social technology. Another enabler in the virtual world is leadership and Chapter 3 of the book shares stories of a number of businesses and the strategies that have been successful for them — lots of tips for any organization here! The culture of sharing and collaboration is another enabler for virtual business and the book includes some great stats on the return on collaboration. Virtual worlds and their adoption by tweens is covered and discussed as an impact for organizations of the future. Strategies for and examples of successful organizations abound — you’ll get lots of ideas and insights from the book and from my interview with Cindy. Get the latest strategies and insights for any organization as our world becomes more virtual. Join us. Register here.
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