D&J Blog

This article, Why Popular Strategies Fade, is a great reminder about strategies through the last 5 or 6 decades.  I am borrowing liberally from it!  “A great strategy is unique, specific, and complete; it stands on the shoulders of a big idea; and it is owned by a leader who is ultimately responsible for its implementation.”  “Great strategies answer five critical questions (“the strategic five”) in ways that are unique to your company: (1) What business or businesses should your company be in? (2) How should you add value to your businesses? (3) Who should be the target customers for your businesses? (4) What should be your value propositions to those target customers? (5) What capabilities should differentiate your ability to add value to your businesses and deliver their value propositions?”

With the speed of change in our world we need to ask ourselves these questions at least once a year as we set our path forward to change with the needs of our communities and with the opportunities provided by new technology.  We also need to grab those big ideas and opportunities when they pop up.  Libraries like to think they were at the heart of the “third place” movement, but Starbucks made it extremely successful. “Starbucks’s strategy to create a nationwide chain of coffee shops as a “third place” between office and home originated in Howard Schultz’s big idea to re-create the Italian espresso bar experience.” So what can we learn from them?

“Great strategies always go against the grain of accepted wisdom. Markets and organizations have powerful immune systems that erect multiple barriers to implementation. Leaders who own their strategies are more likely to persevere through such resistance, and prevail. Great strategies take leaders who believe enough in them — and the ideas they depend on — to be willing to fight their own organization and the broader market for however long it takes to realize the strategy…Larry Page and Sergey Brin sought to “organize the world’s information” with their idea to rank Web pages the way academic publications are ranked. They started Google because no one would buy their idea.”

“Strategy can never stand still. A great strategy can quickly become mediocre in a dynamic market. You should always be seeking ways to open your eyes to new possibilities for your strategies. Strategy concepts are one such way if they stimulate your thinking without substituting for it, and if they enhance your strategy without becoming it. Those are two big ifs. To exploit strategy concepts without allowing them to take over, consider each one that comes along to be an opportunity to challenge and improve the strategy you already have. If you don’t already have a strategy to which you are truly committed, you are particularly vulnerable to being captured by the latest strategy fashion. If you do, ask how a new concept can enhance it. But never let that concept become a shortcut: a way to skip the hard work of identifying the big idea that will power your company’s strategy; of formulating a unique, specific, and complete set of answers to the “strategic five”; and of owning your strategy through thick and thin.”

It’s often difficult to describe things you do instinctively.  I once put together a panel of SLA members asking them to describe themselves by discussing ”how do I know what I know?”  SLA member Anne Mintz, at Forbes magazine at the time, told me it was one of the hardest things she had to do!  My business partner, Rebecca Jones, talks about me as being curious, I am but I just found a better description in a book by Amy Wilkinson, The Creator’s Code: Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs.   The first skill is one I have talked about in workshops I’ve done for SLA on seeing the big picture and strategic planning; Wilkinson calls it Finding the Gap and I had called it, Looking for Opportunities or identifying pain points and finding a solution.  Here’s what Wilkinson says:

FIND THE GAP

By staying alert, creators spot opportunities that others don’t see. They keep their eyes open for fresh potential, a vacuum to fill, or an unmet need. Creators tend to use one of three distinct techniques: transplanting ideas across divides, designing a new way forward, or merging disparate concepts. I characterize creators who master these approaches as Sunbirds, Architects, or Integrators.

In innovating, reinventing, experimenting we do things differently, in a new way for our environment as a creator or entre/intrapreneur.  I find I learn a lot from others in other industries, organizations, etc.  One of the strengths of SLA has always been that those planning conference events bring in practitioners from their specialized fields so we learn from them and can apply their strategies and techniques in a new way in our environments – transplanting ideas across divides. This also happens at Information Today conferences whose programs I design and of which SLA is a prominent sponsor (Computers in Libraries, Internet Librarian).  At these events we transplant ideas across different types of libraries.  Years ago as a special librarian, I didn’t believe I could learn anything from public and academic libraries; Ha!  It is amazing what public libraries do to engage their customers and how special librarians learn from them: i.e. setting up a Pokemon Go in a government library, setting up makerspaces/innovative places spaces in a corporate workplaces, creating book clubs in organizations.

As an entrepreneur and consultant, I am always looking for new ways to move forward and create new designs that will engage our audiences and clients.  Focusing on what might be ahead, creating visions, looking a differences scenarios, giving people something to think about when they consider the future and how their organization or library has to evolve to keep up.  For example, take my granddaughter Logan who is now a year and a half old.  What will her life be like as a young adult?  Consider that she may never learn to tie a shoelace (as there is now Velcro & new types of laces), she may never learn to drive (now that driverless cars are coming online), she may never learn cursive writing since everything is done with computers today, more and more by using our voices!  So if these types of kids are our future clients, what should we be planning in terms of programs and services to stay relevant?

And certainly mashing things up to try different approaches to programs and services is happening everywhere, especially with content and new tech tools: using Paper Li to create a current awareness product on the fly, using bots to reduce repetitious activities, creating online tutorials which can be watched at the point of need or “in the flow” as APQC calls it.

Entrepreneurial thinking is for everyone in every environment.  Do it by keeping an open mind, observing different organizations and places, listening, grabbing ideas from others and trying them out (experimenting), paying attention when someone has a problem/criticism because there is definitely an opportunity/gap there!