Malnourished Employees

Sometimes a comment is just too good to keep in the “comments zone.” A comment that was posted today in regards to my post about the “care and feeding of talent” made me laugh and cringe at the same time…sad to say it is so true, so true…

6 suggestions for supervisors from a malnourished employee:
1. Don’t get in the habit of hiding! When you do we get anxious about sporadic outbursts.
2. Communicate openly. We all need feedback. It validates our work. But it shouldn’t come solely from behind a closed door.
3. Check your personal problems at the door. Please. We’ll do the same.
4. Actively engage your staff in new challenges. This energizes us!
5. Don’t treat your staff members like your children. It feels nice at first but eventually blurs boundaries and leads to frustration. We value a professional working environment more than you might realize.
6. Accept our accomplishments as an invitation to help us grow.
Sooooooooooo, if you’re one of these “malnurioushed employees” how are you going to get fed (before you dry up and wither away…or polish up your resume)? If you’re one of these managers/supervisors who are so caught up in your hide-away worlds of email communications and spreadsheets, when are you going to get activated to initiate your withering staff…Before you lose those talented starving staff members?

Care and Feeding of Talent–It’ll Blossom if you Water It
I’ve been thinking a whole bunch about Talent Management lately (and more than that, I’ve been acting on these thougths…more on that in posts to come…) But for now, I just had to revisit this post from Library Bytes back in Feb….In this post Helene shares info about how a company handles its Talent–in a serious, meaningful and direct manner. Their practices are full of good old-fashioned shock waves…that really shouldn’t need to shock us at all–they make good common sense! Why wouldn’t we want staff working in the jobs they WANT to be in–using their BEST talents and skills–instead of trying to push them into molds of accountabilities and “core competencies” that are strictly about tasks and deliverables? We have to be mining talent and keeping an eye open to it…giving talent an opportunity to unleash itself…and unleash itself in ways that we can’t prescribe in workplans or check lists. Just like the grande general subject of “Life,” Talent is organic, expressive and begging to be set free… It’s out there folks, waiting to blossom, even in the driest of work settings. If you see it, commit to nurture it with freedom, a little elbow room, a few budget dollars, a note of encouragement–you’ve got to water that Talent in order for it to grow! (Especially in an enviroment or work culture that is used to being insular, non-connected, and outputs driven).

Back to the featured company in the article: I even like the sound of their 18 month “engagement survey” they send to all staff. Sounds a lot better than the “employee climate survey,” huh? We want ENGAGED employees, not “CLIMATIZED” ones! Right?! Right? Let me here about it. How is YOUR talent being set free OR not?

Unleash The Talent

How well do you know the staff members that work right beside you…the ones that you interact with periodically but sometimes forget their names…or even the ones you supervise on a daily basis? A better question than this–as far as a productive work environment goes–how well do you know the staff member’s skills and talents? Or just plain old interests. Simple as that. What we are finding more and more is that if you aren’t tapping into the best talents and skills of a staff member (regardless of whether these talents and skills fit directly into their prescribed job description) then the best work and optimal job satisfaction is not being touched on. It’s not just about getting the job done, folks. We’re talking impact on on many levels. It’s all holographic…many levels, many activities, all moving parts contributing to a whole.
So, let me get grounded here…. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that we’re often overlooking the talent that surrounds us each day as we look for something more elusive, some talent that rests in another organization or another business.When–surprise–some of our best talent is right outside our door, left to plug away at tasks or duties, often uninspired and stale. The article points out: “Companies are filled with alienated employees who feel underutilized and ignored, and are either coasting or searching for new jobs elsewhere. A whopping 70% of U.S. employees say they feel either ‘not engaged’ or “actively disengaged” at work, according to a recent survey by the Gallup Organization. “
There are pockets of skill, talent–shall we say even passion? Why not? These pockets are often only as deep as we delve. The article goes on to say that “coaching” is the key to tapping into and opening up this talent. True in most cases. Personally, I am a bit over the word “coaching” as it is so used and misused and often a cop-out practice by organizations when some staff simply need to be managed out of a system and encouraged to move on. I don’t know if it’s so much about “coaching” a staff member to help them flourish as it is about just starting to recognize them as having something beneficial that can feed into an existing program or service and amp it up. It doesn’t have to be a planned process so much as a nod to “go ahead, run with that idea.” Who couldn’t name at least one person who could bring a new voice, a new perspective, a new spin or sparkle to an existing service just by being invited into the loop? Why don’t we invite them in? Take the leash off their necks (and desks). Free them up for a day, a week, a month to run wild with a idea. Great things could happen. The process alone is freeing, and in that it is great. If you recongizea skill or talent or simply a good idea on the job–recognize it, name it immediately…you will likely unleash a tethered talent. And follow-up…young talent, especially, can be strong–but shy.

Break The Rules, Create Anew

Since Helene posted Joyce Valenza’s New 2.0 Rules, I have found myself either referring to them, reflecting on them, or going back and reading them again and again. Just today I was in a (loooong) meeting (now that’s the way to start a Monday off right, kiddos!), when a meeting participant made the comment that it was really “management’s” job to make sure that staff are on target with needed training. First of all, for once and for all, can we please stop referring to the nebulous “management.” I think the “they” in statements like “They won’t let us” is the same group as “management” as in “management is holding us back, man!” So, with this thought on the tip of my brain and a magic marker in my hand, I ran to the first flip chart available and wrote boldly one of Joyce’s new 2.0 rules on the paper: Train Thyself! And so it is. Handholding is allowed in the 2.0 world, but just for kicks. You’ve got to have both hands on the keyboard and striking out on your own course of learning, training , and discovery. If you’re waiting for a manager or supervisor to come to you and suggest you take this or that session, you may as well have him or her pack your lunch and cut the edges off your p&j. Take the reigns, pros of the future. There is so much available to us, so much learning and unlearning we can do right from the comfort of our own laptops or even on a lunchbreak. The classroom is wherever you happened to be connected or intrigued or wanting more. Dig deeper…on your own terms and with your own motivation (there is no other kind…but that’s a rant for another day). Now go read Joyce’s New Rules…and get to learning, shaking, rethinking, moving, acting, changing your world!

2%– For Milk Only

Last night a colleague sent me a link to the article “Managing to the 2%.” I read–and re-read–this article knowing exactly where to find the 2% in my own life. Who are the 2%? They are the ones who provide the need to create rules, policies and guidelines that keep us from new practices and keep us focused on the–you guessed it–the rules, policies and guidelines. While the other 98% are pushing it forward, rolling with the idea of change and how to make our services or programs deeper, richer or more meaningful, the 2% provides the convenient stumbling block often disguised as the “grounding perspective” or the “voice of reason” that is ultimately a thinly veiled fear of change or innovation. But, alas, this thin veil is so seldom questioned, much less torn down. And in this, the 2% appear to rule. They stay in their bubbles of good intentions (“we don’t want to shake people up”) and sensibilities (“what implications could this have on our core services?”). And we ultimately spend our time bowing to this 2% solid void. In the meantime, the 98% who are attemping to reconstruct, dig deeper, create use and meaning are left dragging their feet until they finally pick them up and walk out our doors.

Let’s keep 2% on the milk label only and out of our meeting rooms. Whatchathinkbouthat?

Innovating innovation–and when to let go

First, innovation may likely not just come from a good idea you had on your drive into work. It may involve part of that thought that gets plugged into a need you encounter later on that day. A conversation ensues and before you know it you have written up a proposal and you’ve got an innovative little project on your hands. Let’s say you’ve defined what success looks like (always do this–have many examples) and things are humming along well for a while. Everybody’s getting their needs met. Then something changes…something isn’t working the same. Users aren’t expressing interest, some staff have lost drive for it…what do you do? How do you let something that meant so much and likely provided so much meaning, impact, use at one time drift away? Well, sometimes you have to do just that. Even with innovation we must know when to say yes and when to say no; when to hang on and when to let go.
How do we learn to let go of what is not working. What was innovative at one time–will it always be…we must keep our fingers on the pulse, knowing that unless we can let go we’ll likely cause another kind of brickwall effect.

Innovation–The Hard Way

I’ve been thinking much about the idea of INNOVATION lately. You hear it used so much. It gets thrown around in board rooms and program rooms, on product packages and TV shows. But how do we get to innovation? Two thoughts have come to me about how we often get there. You could call it innovation-by-demand, or innovation-by-command…what I’m thinking about is the idea that often innovation happens either when we hit the proverbial brick wall and have no other option than to innovate, try “something new,” go in a different direction. Or innovation happens in the “back room.” This is when one or more individuals get together from one or more organizations or agencies and dream up an idea that is just–well, dreamy. To them. And then the worker bees (and perhaps a grant administrator) are pulled out to do the work. Reports are written, justifications are given…and we all live happily ever after. Right? But neither of these is true innovation. These are about handshakes or hardships. Neither of these modes allow an organization to be poised for innovation. These modes of “innovating” (which I believe happen more often than we’d care to admit) cheat us from the opportunities to create needs-based, natural innovative programs and services because we’re too busy jumping through the hoops of our dreamed-up innovative(well, really, “unnovative”) ideas. What would happen if we just let things happen naturally? Trees might grow, real relationships might emerge, brick walls might begin to crumble.

Barriers Part 2

In an earlier post I discussed psychological barriers that can be imposed on library users. What about the plain old fashioned “physical barriers?” Those are the ones that we have to deal with every day and in a really obvious way. So why are they there? Best intentions. Truly, it is the best intentions (at least I want to believe it is) that causes libraries to stick up enter/exit bars and winding paths of stanchions to get to the check-out desk. We say we’re helping keep order, keeping our users from getting confused or losing their ways. Hmmm, how about just cluttering up their paths? You’ll see in this photo that the stationary barriers are still there (not much we can do about those without the use of heavy equipment…though we should–and I say WILL–must believe we WILL). But, you’ll see a lot of freed-up space in the lobby behind them. This is now USABLE space because the imposing (and not-so-pretty) mismatched stanchions were removed. And guess what? People know how to form a line (or lines) on their own. Why do we think we have to direct them to a station? Even on the busiest days since the stanchions were removed, people find their way. They fall–you got it–in line! Now to get rid of those hardcore enter/exit bars…the ones that smack you in the gut because you entered through the exit line (this happens more times than you can count–to users and staff). There are better ways! We’ll never implement them if we don’t challenge ourselves and TRUST our users–and ourselves–to be, well, smart–and human!

Where’s is the Point?


This post has received several visits, questions, and a bit of a stir in the old golf-pencil stash…I’ve reposted it here as the link for comments on the earlier post couldn’t be retrieved…feel free to comment away now…

Where’s The Point?
I’m inclined to say there is no point…at least when it comes to these familiar little things–yes, the golf pencil, the mini-pencil, or the nubby pencil as Helene, a PLCMC collegue, told me she calls them today. Whatever you call them, I think they are a perfect little example of old ideas or practices that aren’t really serving us any more in libraries–at least not effectively. My point in their pointlessness is this: We pay money for these tiny little things that last perhaps for 2 or 3 usages and then wind up in the garbage can. You can’t sharpen them as they get lost or stuck in the pencil sharpener…they have no eraser and wind up being more of an annoyance than anything. As I was thinking about this, I looked at the pen in my own hand. It was a nice padded grip pen that I received free from a promotional products rep…I then I looked at the pencil cup on my desk and it is filled with dozens of unused pens and pencils… I look around the workroom in my department–dozens, perhaps hundreds of unused pencils and pens! And still we are paying for these tiny little bothersome yellow pencils! My curiosity deepened on this small topic, so I made a few calls and found out how much these items cost–for a box of them (114) retail = $14! Wholesale= $8! (a real steal? No.) I can confidently say that the library where I work each day could easily go through a box or more of these a day! I’ll let you do the math. We’re talking thousands of dollars here folks. But how could anything replace our familiar golf pencils? They’re as Library as, say bookends? For starters, how about just bringing out some of those hundreds of pens and pencils floating around in all the drawers and cups and bins in our offices…or, hmmm, remember that pen I mentioned earlier that had the name of a product rep on it? Don’t you just know that they (or another local agency) would likely jump head over heals to have their pens with their logo and info used in a building that serves thousands of people daily. Even better, what if the Library took the thousands of dollars it’s spending on these short-lived items and had inexpensive pens or pencils printed. “Then people would take them…they’d walk out the door!”you say? My response:” Oh, no! That means we’d have pens with our logo and message floating all over the Charlotte region!” Not such a bad thing to happen, I say. This alternative has much more of a point than a $14 box of golf pencils. Get my point?

Barriers, Freedom, Stickers?

Stop Sign Montage
Originally uploaded by JaypeeOnline.

I have recently been working on a presentation about intellectual freedom. Interesting in life when you are focusing on a subject or idea so many “illustrations” of it begin to appear around you–some monumental, some mundane–all mental-note worthy.
Picture me wading through manuals, articles, and online material in preparation to present information on intellectual freedom…when…poof…real-life appears before me. Real life in the form of a series of emails in which I find out that a few public libraries within hollering distance of where I am located are starting to sticker and/or relocate parts of their collections to designate them into levels to support the reading lists of a particular for-profit “incentive-based reading program” (er, let’s be fun and a little coy here and just say that the program starts with an “A” and ends with an “R.”) Cut to me, like a bolt of lightning out of the Library Heavens, running to find my intellectual freedom file of information. Pouring through my notes and print-outs I find the small phrase that cuts to the chase–“psychological barriers.” Think: it is not the intent of the Public Library to support or construct any psychological barriers for any readers. Easy enough to buy into right. And yet, alas, the thought of a collection of blue spine-stickered books (for the 4.5 readers) and yellow spine-stickered books (for the 2.4 readers) has psychological barrier written all over it.
An aside from the my-school-days memory box: Did we not learn anything from the “SRA Program” in the 70’s and 80’s? As a student who endured this during that time, I can say that yes, I learned one big lesson from it: Reading = Taking a test to prove you did the reading! Is that what we wish to support? How about Reading = discovery of self, the world, new information in the method, at the level, in the time that is right for the Individual and not at a $tandardized pace (yes, the “$” is intentional).
So, can a few hundred stickers really be barriers to reading freedom? Can’t they be seen as a support–as short-cut–for users to find what is required by their schools? Answer this question: If a user has 10 minutes to find books on a busy evening will they take the time or find the resource to lead them to that book on “coins of the world” their child really wants or choice from those which are pre-selected and marked or stickered with an “authorized” company’s leveling system? Are we talking about barriers or support here? Perhaps it’s a pretty grey area…but it becomes more clear to me with the stickers come out, a small psyco-barrier goes up.
Let reading freedom ring!