Today I am attending this conference http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/libraries/conference2014/index.html and I will be blogging it live. I have just arrived.
Sue Mehrer introduced the conference. Attendees had been asked to blog ideas that they associated with quality. next it was the keynote address:
Frankie Wilson, Head of Assessment, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford.
What is Quality? Frankie gave some stock responses: just another management fad? Excellence: value, experience, satisfaction, impact, standards, performance; another one of those words?
It is not about the end product, or, like the olympics (faster higher, stronger.) It is not a way of keeping control or maintaining existing standards: that is the opposite of what it is. Rather a way of thinking. Putting the customer at the heart of everything that we do. It is about continous improvement. Then she's written "Dependent on the organisational culture" but I'm not sure what she means there.
She asked everyone to stand up and then asked those who gave an involuntary twitch when she mentioined "customers" to sit down [many librarians prefer to refer to 'readers' but I was trained in a public library so I don't.
A library, she goes on to say, is about its staff: all about people. Behaviour is driven by culture: the beliefs, behaviours, norms, dominant values, rules and climate in the organisation. It is partly about the things you are taught at induction, but there are other norms like what happens at birthdays etc. and it is important that you fit in with the dominant behaviour in this area because humans are social creatures. Everything that the user experiences is driven by this underlying culture of the staff.
It's learning to improve and its created by you. It is promoted by strong leadership and everyone pulling in the same direction: otherwise you will cancel each other out and not move forward.
Quality is a way of looking at what we do, what we do is culture, therefore we need a culture of quality. Quality is doing the right thing. Doing things right, learning, suited to our environment.
Doing the right thing:
-What do your users want?; who are your users? (some yet unborn? - we preserve heritage for future users). How do you gather feedback? How do you respond to feedback? (do you dismiss it? Does it lead to action?)
-What does the organisation want (Cambridge University?); is this in conflict with what the users want? How do you see the big picture? How do you gather feedback about this?
-What is coming on the horizon?; how do you generate a strategic plan? How do you achieve this? How do actions on the ground of your library staff relate to the strategic plan? How do you monitor progress?
All this depends on staff learning. Are our staff empowered? (decisions should be made at the lowest possible locus- with consultation if appropriate). eg. student comes with a plausible explanation that thier house was flooded.Can the person at the desk make the decision to wipe the fine or how high up do decisions of that nature be made? Shelvers come across a problem not related to shelving who listened to users and were encouraged to plan and implement it together, in consultation. Are staff involved in change? How is learning shared throughout the Library? What is the attitude to mistakes? What is the attitude to risk? It is better to try something to try to improve than not to try at all. Are all staff encouraged to innovate?- within their area but also in other areas. If you have an idea you should suggest it to show that you are innovative, and managers should encourage staff to innovate. Ideas are not dangerous: they are great.
Quality culture is being suited to the environment. "How many librarians does it take to change a lightbulb?" - answer "Change?" Change is the only constant. Libraries' environment is affected by changes in technology (Amazon raises expectations) publishing, funding requirements, student expectations, HE etc.
To be suited to a changing environment. How do you feel about change in your library? What are the drivers and what are the barriers? What type of changes are implementes "sexy" vs. "vanilla".
Aiming to improve- how do you define quality? Who determines the level of quality? What is your attitude to quality improvement? What is your attitude to quality improvement? Does it conflict with "fire fighting"- day to day work overload.
The library is the people. YOu need to treat them in a certain way to get teh best out of them. How are staff treated. Do they feel loved and cherished? What training and career progression is provided? Is your contribution recognised?
Leadership: Does your library operate according to your leader's vision and values? Do you trust your leader? Do you feel inspired? Are you all pulling in the same direction? (or do your users just get passed from pillar to post.) How do you work together? Is service level consistant? How effective is communication? Some things cannot be communicated, and then trust is important. Do staff see how they fit into the bigger picture? Is the staff structure appropriate?
Quality is complex, like an organism: if you change one part there will be ramifications in all the other parts.
A high quality library will:
-Gather feedback proactively via a wide range of methods to access views of all users and non-users.
-Proactively seek feedback to assess the impact of changes to the library service on customer satisfaction.
-Collate feedback across all feedback methods and analyse it to determine ht overall picture and trends?
-Advertise the feedback received along with the library's response (including timescales). ("you said, we did.") This will encourage people to comment more. (however it is difficult to find what future needers might think.)
-Each user will have different (perhaps conflicting) needs. How do you deal with conflicts? Do you listen to the vice chancellor? Or the weakest? Therefore how will you compromise or differenciate? Will there be unintended consequences?
Really get to know your usersbut don't go native- what is good for your users may be bad for others.
Some things are impossible- right?
Communication is important: up and down, side to side between departments without having to go via a manager. Do you all know what the direction is? You are responsible for changing the culture of the library. There needs to be a structure, management, plicies, processes and procedure to recognise that the quality of the library is improved.
Put yourself in the shoes of your user- torture your graduate trainees: an inhouse source. Visit other libraries as a user. Other cambridge libraries. Copy their ideas but also think what was difficult and how to improve your experience. Shadow users and give them a coffee shop voucher. Suggest a book for them to find, observe how they use the website, ask how they would go about starting a research project. Even three or four will tell you things you didn't know. Listen why they complain. If they ask "why you don't use the interlibrary loan system", think, why don't they know that we have one?
Anna's verdict: it is hard to give an instant verdict: usually you have to have a cup of tea before you can assess things. I guess I found this talk very interesting indeed: I knew more or less all the things she said really (inductive learning): she brought all that intuitive and stored away disparate knowledge and organised it all nicely: this is what makes a good talk: a nice balance of things that you sort of know but need saying, so that you say, "oh yes, that's obviously true, that's great."
Really she was talking about organisational change management. Is quality the same as change management? If they employed Frankie to be an assessor does she have her sights on managing the whole library from this outpost? But her point is that we should all be like this because how the library is managed does depend organically on the behaviour and attitudes of our staff and if the mechanisms are in place properly then we need to all move forward together. "Pulling Forward Together" seems to be her watchword, and it is a good watchword. It is (necessarily) a bit airy fairy though: I would have liked to have heard more examples. I thought it would be fun to write a novel about how quality care and change management are implemented in a company. I guess that's what "the Paradise" and "Mr. Selfridge" are perhaps.
I think the library where I work actually treats staff quite well, and particulary the department where I work, where, fortunately, as far as I know, all the staff feel cared for, encouraged and respected, with good staff feedback mechanisms (staff liaison groups with other departments, management meetings, one to one meetings with line managers, regular staff meetings, a good intranet where you can see who you might want to email. etc.). Unfortunately there is little control over how much we are paid, which is a very big factor in staff contentment. (I feel I myself am paid quite well,- I know i';s not something that one is supposed to talk about, but it seems to me strange that this is never mentioned in assessments of how staff are treated.)
It is difficult to think of ways to improve things, and not something I am very good at (I am better at noticing little problems that users face and trying to pester people to improve and mend things.) Some of my colleages are good at thinking of wild and radical ideas (I immediately think of all the reasons why these are impractiacal). It is nice to work with these people.
Most of the quality mechanisms that Frankie mentioned are in place in our organisation, but that is because we are a world quality institution, so it is only to be expected.
On the 50th anniversary of Asimov's predictions, I wonder where our libraries will be in 50 years time and how the services that we are planning now will have been implemented by then.
Sue Mehrer introduced the conference. Attendees had been asked to blog ideas that they associated with quality. next it was the keynote address:
Frankie Wilson, Head of Assessment, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford.
What is Quality? Frankie gave some stock responses: just another management fad? Excellence: value, experience, satisfaction, impact, standards, performance; another one of those words?
It is not about the end product, or, like the olympics (faster higher, stronger.) It is not a way of keeping control or maintaining existing standards: that is the opposite of what it is. Rather a way of thinking. Putting the customer at the heart of everything that we do. It is about continous improvement. Then she's written "Dependent on the organisational culture" but I'm not sure what she means there.
She asked everyone to stand up and then asked those who gave an involuntary twitch when she mentioined "customers" to sit down [many librarians prefer to refer to 'readers' but I was trained in a public library so I don't.
A library, she goes on to say, is about its staff: all about people. Behaviour is driven by culture: the beliefs, behaviours, norms, dominant values, rules and climate in the organisation. It is partly about the things you are taught at induction, but there are other norms like what happens at birthdays etc. and it is important that you fit in with the dominant behaviour in this area because humans are social creatures. Everything that the user experiences is driven by this underlying culture of the staff.
It's learning to improve and its created by you. It is promoted by strong leadership and everyone pulling in the same direction: otherwise you will cancel each other out and not move forward.
Quality is a way of looking at what we do, what we do is culture, therefore we need a culture of quality. Quality is doing the right thing. Doing things right, learning, suited to our environment.
Doing the right thing:
-What do your users want?; who are your users? (some yet unborn? - we preserve heritage for future users). How do you gather feedback? How do you respond to feedback? (do you dismiss it? Does it lead to action?)
-What does the organisation want (Cambridge University?); is this in conflict with what the users want? How do you see the big picture? How do you gather feedback about this?
-What is coming on the horizon?; how do you generate a strategic plan? How do you achieve this? How do actions on the ground of your library staff relate to the strategic plan? How do you monitor progress?
All this depends on staff learning. Are our staff empowered? (decisions should be made at the lowest possible locus- with consultation if appropriate). eg. student comes with a plausible explanation that thier house was flooded.Can the person at the desk make the decision to wipe the fine or how high up do decisions of that nature be made? Shelvers come across a problem not related to shelving who listened to users and were encouraged to plan and implement it together, in consultation. Are staff involved in change? How is learning shared throughout the Library? What is the attitude to mistakes? What is the attitude to risk? It is better to try something to try to improve than not to try at all. Are all staff encouraged to innovate?- within their area but also in other areas. If you have an idea you should suggest it to show that you are innovative, and managers should encourage staff to innovate. Ideas are not dangerous: they are great.
Quality culture is being suited to the environment. "How many librarians does it take to change a lightbulb?" - answer "Change?" Change is the only constant. Libraries' environment is affected by changes in technology (Amazon raises expectations) publishing, funding requirements, student expectations, HE etc.
To be suited to a changing environment. How do you feel about change in your library? What are the drivers and what are the barriers? What type of changes are implementes "sexy" vs. "vanilla".
Aiming to improve- how do you define quality? Who determines the level of quality? What is your attitude to quality improvement? What is your attitude to quality improvement? Does it conflict with "fire fighting"- day to day work overload.
The library is the people. YOu need to treat them in a certain way to get teh best out of them. How are staff treated. Do they feel loved and cherished? What training and career progression is provided? Is your contribution recognised?
Leadership: Does your library operate according to your leader's vision and values? Do you trust your leader? Do you feel inspired? Are you all pulling in the same direction? (or do your users just get passed from pillar to post.) How do you work together? Is service level consistant? How effective is communication? Some things cannot be communicated, and then trust is important. Do staff see how they fit into the bigger picture? Is the staff structure appropriate?
Quality is complex, like an organism: if you change one part there will be ramifications in all the other parts.
A high quality library will:
-Gather feedback proactively via a wide range of methods to access views of all users and non-users.
-Proactively seek feedback to assess the impact of changes to the library service on customer satisfaction.
-Collate feedback across all feedback methods and analyse it to determine ht overall picture and trends?
-Advertise the feedback received along with the library's response (including timescales). ("you said, we did.") This will encourage people to comment more. (however it is difficult to find what future needers might think.)
-Each user will have different (perhaps conflicting) needs. How do you deal with conflicts? Do you listen to the vice chancellor? Or the weakest? Therefore how will you compromise or differenciate? Will there be unintended consequences?
Really get to know your usersbut don't go native- what is good for your users may be bad for others.
Some things are impossible- right?
Communication is important: up and down, side to side between departments without having to go via a manager. Do you all know what the direction is? You are responsible for changing the culture of the library. There needs to be a structure, management, plicies, processes and procedure to recognise that the quality of the library is improved.
Put yourself in the shoes of your user- torture your graduate trainees: an inhouse source. Visit other libraries as a user. Other cambridge libraries. Copy their ideas but also think what was difficult and how to improve your experience. Shadow users and give them a coffee shop voucher. Suggest a book for them to find, observe how they use the website, ask how they would go about starting a research project. Even three or four will tell you things you didn't know. Listen why they complain. If they ask "why you don't use the interlibrary loan system", think, why don't they know that we have one?
Anna's verdict: it is hard to give an instant verdict: usually you have to have a cup of tea before you can assess things. I guess I found this talk very interesting indeed: I knew more or less all the things she said really (inductive learning): she brought all that intuitive and stored away disparate knowledge and organised it all nicely: this is what makes a good talk: a nice balance of things that you sort of know but need saying, so that you say, "oh yes, that's obviously true, that's great."
Really she was talking about organisational change management. Is quality the same as change management? If they employed Frankie to be an assessor does she have her sights on managing the whole library from this outpost? But her point is that we should all be like this because how the library is managed does depend organically on the behaviour and attitudes of our staff and if the mechanisms are in place properly then we need to all move forward together. "Pulling Forward Together" seems to be her watchword, and it is a good watchword. It is (necessarily) a bit airy fairy though: I would have liked to have heard more examples. I thought it would be fun to write a novel about how quality care and change management are implemented in a company. I guess that's what "the Paradise" and "Mr. Selfridge" are perhaps.
I think the library where I work actually treats staff quite well, and particulary the department where I work, where, fortunately, as far as I know, all the staff feel cared for, encouraged and respected, with good staff feedback mechanisms (staff liaison groups with other departments, management meetings, one to one meetings with line managers, regular staff meetings, a good intranet where you can see who you might want to email. etc.). Unfortunately there is little control over how much we are paid, which is a very big factor in staff contentment. (I feel I myself am paid quite well,- I know i';s not something that one is supposed to talk about, but it seems to me strange that this is never mentioned in assessments of how staff are treated.)
It is difficult to think of ways to improve things, and not something I am very good at (I am better at noticing little problems that users face and trying to pester people to improve and mend things.) Some of my colleages are good at thinking of wild and radical ideas (I immediately think of all the reasons why these are impractiacal). It is nice to work with these people.
Most of the quality mechanisms that Frankie mentioned are in place in our organisation, but that is because we are a world quality institution, so it is only to be expected.
On the 50th anniversary of Asimov's predictions, I wonder where our libraries will be in 50 years time and how the services that we are planning now will have been implemented by then.
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