I spoke at the recent Future Tech Strategies for Libraries organized by Jane Dysart & Stephen Abram on the fact that Technology is one of the Enablers of Digital Strategy, and is to be aligned with the organization strategy. Well, that’s what I was supposed to speak on. I was supposed to remind people that the organization’s strategy drives their technology strategy.
I used to believe that. The organization – in our case, the library – analyzes trends impacting its community or campus or parent organization, consults its markets or communities to understand their challenges & dreams, and then maps a strategy to move the library forward towards a meaningful, desirable future. And where was technology in that discussion? It was an enabler: you determine what you want to do and use technology to do it.
But now I’m not so convinced. Technology not only transforms work and operational processes, it opens up incredible new worlds of service concepts and deliver channels for us. So maybe we establish our technology strategy first? and then map our organizational strategy to align with it? This is the ying and yang of powerful drivers for libraries. There is a positive tension between the technology strategy and the organizational strategy – and that’s healthy for the library. Grasp your hands together and first try to pull them apart; breath into the pulling. Then, keep grasping your hands and push your hands together as hard as you can; keep breathing into it, and feel the breathing into your shoulders. Then let go. This is a normal quick warm-up for your arms and shoulders prior to working out; the push and pull releases tension and readies your muscles and tendons, oh – and increases flexibility. It’s just one little part of a warm-up, but look at the results – in fact, feel the result. You can feel the difference in your upper body.
So this positive tension is pretty good for the library too: it increases the flexibility and readies the library for the work ahead. Not a bad habit to get into, is it? Here’s the slides, which include the most recent Did you know? video.
