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Rebecca Jones posted this in Lib, IM, KM, Planning on March 17th, 2012 Kathy Dempsey, marketing maven of Libraries are Essential, and I are presenting at Computers in Libraries 2012 on ways to “Imagine and Dream Big About Your Library.“ Creating a vision is an action. It is not sitting at tables wordsmithing a slogan. It is about envisioning the future that you, the Board, staff, and senior management want the library to have; it is really no different than envisioning your home – your meal – your career – your life. Yes, things happen, and that’s no excuse not to envision or design your future. Kathy and I will discuss important and successful it is for libraries to get off their chairs, charge their imaginations, don their dreams and stand in the future they want their library — their communities — their campuses — their organizations — to experience. Here’s my slides. Oh – and here’s one of my favourite quotes about the importance of positive futures – and standing in that future. Richard Seymour, one of the world’s foremost designers of seymourpowell says:
“We make the future; it doesn’t just happen. If you stand in the future and, then, draw the present towards you in a series of stepping stones, then, you’re liberated to a view of what’s going to happen that nobody else has got.”
and
“Designers cannot be, by definition, pessimists. It just doesn’t go with the job. We’re supposed to be defining the future, aren’t we? [...] If we can’t see the world as a better
Continue reading Visioning: Stand in that Future
Love Seth Godin’s recent post, The Map has been Replaced by the Compass.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
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!
An interesting study by MDC Partners & Allison & Partners called the C-Factors Report points to creativity, collaboration and culture to re-engerize today’s global economy. They surveyed leading CEOs & CMOs who view creativity as a criticial driver of the global economy. Great stats & insights:
* 73 % of respondents think we’ve entered the “imagination” economy, with 98 percent affirming that creativity is critical to economic success today
* 76% state that creativity has a significant impact on driving business forward
* over half (57%) strive to develop a strong creative culture within their organizations; & 80% believe creativity must be generated and fostered by industry leaders in order for new and innovative thinking to survive
* 73% of senior executives will place an increasing emphasis on creatively inspired communications in the coming years
“Creating a vision, and building a defined culture around that vision, was a strong theme. Thought leaders from start-ups such as Inkling, to legacy companies such as IBM, all cited the need for deep discipline and a firm self-audit process to unleash the broadest creative efforts possible within a corporation.”
I’ts exhilarating for Rebecca and I when we work with clients to create visions that are so exciting and forward thinking that organization leaders can build strong support for their strategies to guide them towards that positive future. I love the “imagination” economy mentioned in this study and the fact that leaders realize innovative thinking and creative cultures are so important today. Goes back to my favorite Walt Disney
Continue reading Creativity, Visions & Success
It’s great when organizations, and people, think about their future. Many do not. In their book, Competing for the Future in the mid-90s, Gary Hamel & C. K. Prahalad said,
“In our experience, about 40% of senior executives time is spent looking outward, and ofthis time, 30% is spent peering 3, 4, 5 plus years into the future. And of the time spentlooking forward, no more than 20%is spent attempting to build a collective view of thefuture (the other 80% is spent looking at the future of the manager’s particular business).Thus, on average, senior management is devoting less than 3% (40% x 30% x 20% =2.4%) of its energy to building a corporate perspective on the future. In some companies the figure is less than 1%.”
This statement resonated with me at the time and is the reason that Dysart & Jones Associates has had a successful strategic planning consulting practice for almost 20 years. We created an accelerated planning technique that we use to facilitate expedited planning with clients, we wrote an article on Standing in the Future in Special Libraries (precursor to Information Outlook) in 2000, we teach and talk about planning in many venues — most recently at the SLA conference last month in Philadelphia with Thinking Strategically: How to See the Big Picture/Possibilities.
But how do we, and how should you, get insights and ideas to create strategic and innovative directions and priorities to be ready for the future?
1. Be deeply aware of your context
Continue reading 5 Steps to Being Future Ready
Jeremiah Owyang
Great Mashable interview, 5 Tips for Creating More Efficient Social Media Processes, with Jeremiah Owyang, opening keynote speaker at KMWorld 2011. I’m looking forward to Jeremiah’s talk in DC on Nov 1, Architecting a Connected Enterprise.
From the article: “Creating, executing and evaluating a social media plan takes a healthy amount of time, money and talent — resources that are scarce in today’s business world….Here are 5 essential tips:
1. Utilize your existing team
2. Build a plan that is nimble
3. Minimize spend on tools & consultants
4. Hire qualified talent
5. Learn from others”
Interesting that these tips are the same ones we use with clients when we are working on strategic or direction planning. We work with the existing team to create flexible plans with stretch in them, using their talents to create environmental scans, focus groups, organization interviews as much as we can. We definitely encourage learning from others by doing industry research, as we did recently: Assessing Innovation in Corporate & Government Libraries.
Rebecca Jones posted this in Lib, IM, KM, Planning on June 6th, 2011 Jim Morgenstern of dmA Planning & Management Services is a Planner (a real planner, with degrees & certification) who has literally completed dozens of community, recreation and library master and strategic plans. He’s seen it all – seen it work well & result in an actionable plan that truly makes a difference, and seen it fail miserably resulting in a document that gathers dust and no moss. Here’s his presentation on why some strategic planning goes off the rails and the key factors for ensuring the planning stays on track & blows through the station to a successful future.
Jim Morgenstern Library Strategic Planning View more presentations from Rebecca Jones
Fantastic SLA PH&T Division conference at the Hilton Bonnet Creek in Orlando, began with Kevin Davies, Chief Editor Bio-IT World and author of The $1,000 Genome (Free Press 2010). He’s an unbelievably engaging, articulate, funny & informed speaker. And he explored the revolution in DNA sequencing technologies, personal genomics and the evolving environment of personalized medicine. Yep. Personalized medicine. Today, for $200, you can spit in a cup & have your DNA screened; this isn’t the detailed DNA sequencing that identifies EVERYTHING about your physiological make-up, but it can identify significant abnormalities in your DNA — such as a man whose screening revealed he had advanced prostate cancer with NO symptoms. Talk about customized — he was able to take the results to his doctor and steps were taken (surgery, cancer treatment) to save his life. As the price point of DNA sequencing continues to drop, how will people handle this information? what’s the impact on the medical system? on the insurance system? Certainly DNA sequencing will help with drug develop, patient stratification and tailoring treatment; it will also raise huge questions regarding how organizations and insurers handle this information. Davies ended with the premise of “the 15 minute genome by 2014″.
Yo. That’s a premise. Holding much promise & peril. Every evolution, revolution & innovation brings promise & peril.
And that’s what struck me as I gave a talk about Thinking Strategically & Critically. As we consider & question our assumptions regarding access and resources, we open up possibilities. And, with possibilities —
Continue reading Innovations bring promise & peril
Moving ideas, plans and projects ahead is always a challenge. I talked today with Ken Haycock who is well known for making things happen. As a member of the Advisory Board for San Jose State University School of Library & Information Science, I watched Ken grow the program and develop it into the only totally online program of its kind with students and faculty from around the world on the ecampus. What are his secrets? Well, Ken was hired to transform the library program at SJSU, and he started with the mission and worked on a strategic plan with his faculty and admin. Under Ken’s leadership, they looked carefully at their strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities — even those beyond the univeristy — and also the opportunity costs and costs of “not doing”. They looked at their customers, internal at the university and external with students, employees as well as other library schools. They set goals, such as being nationally ranked (which they achieved in a few short years and keep improving the rank number). They changed processes, which is hard as all change is, but used a consultative process with consensus votes. They met 4 times a year for 2 day retreats (rather than monthly meetings); they brought in more faculty support staff. They looked at what the university valued (national rankings, generating $$, awards) and achieved those goals. They found work arounds. Basically, as Ken says, “we were unrelenting in our direction, although our approaches sometimes
Continue reading Getting Things Done: Unrelenting in Direction
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