Apply the fundamental principles of planning, management, marketing, and advocacy.
Introduction
Information professionals typically work as part of institutions and organizations. Whether these are large organizations with hundreds or even thousands of employees, or small, with just a handful of employees, managing an organization requires specific skills and knowledge. Thus, in addition to performing information science job skills, many information professionals also manage these organizations, must plan for the future, and know how to use marketing programs to grow audiences and inform them about programs and services. Advocacy skills are also essential for leaders and employees of information organizations, who must be able to communicate the value that these organizations bring to the communities we serve, as well as the core values our profession, such as freedom of information.
Planning
Planning is a way for organizations to set goals for the future, while managing day-to-day work in a purposeful manner. Strategic plans typically look two to three years into the future, and set a vision for the long-term success of the entire organization. Plans can also focus on aspects of the organization, such as budget plans, policies, and operational plans. Project management is also a type of plan that is focused on a single project (Evans & Ward, 2007). Several tools are available to help organizations make plans. These tools can help to gather information about audience and environment, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of a project, or the entire organization. The discussion below will focus on strategic planning, which aims to create a vision for the organization, and a guide to take the entire organization into the future.
One of the first steps in formulating a strategic plan is to do an environmental scan to gather information about the organization itself and its local community, and to determine the needs of the organization’s audiences. Environmental scans can include researching the history of the organization, examining the organization’s resources and capabilities, performing literature reviews about similar organizations, and comparing the organization to competitors or peers, as well as global trends. The scan should also include research about the local community to find out as much as possible about which communities are served, and which are not, as well as educational and information needs, demographics, and the nature of past engagement with the organization. One can also approach community members directly to gather information through surveys and focus groups, and by inviting community members to serve on task force groups. Scans can also include analysis of the larger trends in society that may affect the organization, such as economic trends, funding sources, legal factors, political trends, and technology.
With information from the environmental scan, an organization can formulate a mission statement for the entire organization. This statement should be a concise, focused expression of the organization’s purpose and goals for the future. The mission statement gives the community and the staff a clear vision of the organization’s goals. Communicating this plan clearly is key to successful implementation. This helps staff members understand the larger purpose of their own work, and helps the community understand the value that the organization provides. SWOT analysis is another tool that organizations can use for all kinds of planning. It involves articulating the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of the strategic plan, or a program or project. For strategic planning, SWOT can provide a clear framework for assessing the organization’s capacities, and can also help identify factors that can help or hinder the strategic plan (Evans & Ward, 2007).
Management
Any organization with a staff of more than two people must organize and manage the staff in some way. Planning and management work together. Very few plans move forward without any glitches, and setbacks, and management practices help to address these setbacks, re-align goals, and get plans back on track. Thus, management helps to handle factors such as decision-making, coordination of work, conflict resolution, and project planning. Many management structures involve power relationships, by giving authority and power to some people over the work of others. Thus, management theories tend to draw on psychological theories that explain social dynamics, power struggles, and motivation. Most organizations and the individual managers working within them tend to blend aspects of more than one approach to management in order to meet the needs of their own organization. I believe that flexibility and thoughtfulness are key to successful management. My view is closely aligned with the contingency theory of management, which argues that there is no one answer to all management questions, and that managers should assess situations on an individual basis. Understanding the history of management, and the theories behind several management approaches will give any manager some knowledge to draw upon when dealing with all sorts of situations.
Some of the earliest management theories came out of the 19th century, with the rise of the industrial revolution. The theories of Frederick Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth—called scientific approaches to management—tended to be very mechanistic, emphasizing production and treating the worker almost as a machine. Since those early days, many alternative approaches to management theory have been developed. Administrative approaches take a long view of the entire organization’s production, establish a hierarchy of employees and managers, and divides labor up into specialized work units. These approaches, most notably promoted by Henri Fayol and Max Weber in the early 1900s, have been adopted into many organizations today. Weber’s ‘bureaucratic’ management model, which is based heavily on hierarchy and a rules-based administration, has been recognized in many non-profit and non-governmental organizations, including many information organizations (Evans & Ward, 2007).
In the 1920s, Elton Mayo’s studies of fatigue and productivity in workers introduced a sociological perspective to management, by showing how group dynamics and managers’ styles play a role in employee motivation. Mayo’s work is called the behaviorist approach. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Mayo’s work was influential on many libraries and archives, which shifted towards democratic administration styles, with committee-based decision making (Evans & Ward, 2007). The systems approach to management views an organization as a system with many interdependent parts, as well as a part of a larger system itself. A notable systems theorist is Peter Senge, whose 1990 concept of the ‘learning organization’ argues that that successful organizations are able to constantly adapt and improve. These organizations do this by fostering an environment that promotes learning and collaborative teamwork. Senge’s theories have become adopted into many 21st century work environments, where there has been a rise in collaboration, teamwork, and the valuing of personal learning for employees as a way of nurturing innovation.
Marketing
Marketing is the process of letting the community know about your organization’s programs and offerings. In my mind, marketing is an essential aspect of any program or service. What good is a well-organized literacy program, incredible technology facilities, or a great public event, if no one knows they exist? Marketing is really about communication. Ideally, this communication is not just one-way. In addition to promoting existing programs and services, organizations should use environmental scanning techniques to listen to the community and design new programs and services to meet the audience’s needs. In addition to creating awareness, marketing can educate audiences about the benefits of services and programs by explaining how to use them, and providing explanation of their value to the individual and the community.
The process of developing marketing strategies involves evaluating the services or programs at hand, identifying the targeted audiences, segmenting those audiences, and analyzing the behavior of audiences through surveys and focus groups (Evans & Ward, 2007). All of this is done to answer questions about the most effective message, as well as style of communication and outreach to audiences. Which audiences want to know about and take part in a given program? Do the targeted audiences know that the program or service exists? Do audiences know how to access your program and services (i.e. location and time of a program, or how to use a library catalog)? Do different audiences want to receive different types of communication about a given program or services (e.g. via radio, print mailings, TV ads, or via text message or on Facebook)? What questions or concerns do audiences have about programs and services? Do different audiences understand what a program or service has to offer them? Marketing evaluations have the power to not just inform the content and style of an organization’s communications, the information obtained can also provide invaluable feedback that can be used to improve the services and programs themselves.
In addition to developing strong communications to an organization’s audience, these approaches can also used to develop internal marketing strategies within an organization. As mentioned above, it is just as important for an organization to communicate its goals and mission to the staff members as it is to communicate these to the community. An informed staff will provide better services to the organization’s audiences. Internal marketing can help management communicate important decisions to the staff in a way that mitigates stress and anxiety, while ensuring that all members of the staff get the message. Examples of internal marketing campaigns include plans for the roll-out of new technology applications or tools, plans to explain new policies or communicate the reasoning behind new programs, and even communications about health and safety issues.
Advocacy
Advocacy is the process of supporting and promoting a cause. Advocacy often has political implications, because many causes promote values that are under attack for political or economic reasons. But advocacy can also raise awareness of unknown, or misunderstood issues. Advocacy is at the core of what many information professionals do, especially for those working in libraries, archives, and museums. These organizations often rely on public funds and taxpayer money for survival. Thus, there are many resources in the community competing with these organizations for tax funds, and the way to get the funding is to show your value to the community.
Many libraries, archives, and museums must advocate constantly for their value to the community, as they face constant threats to budget cuts and staff layoffs. Advocacy is especially important for those organizations that receive public funds. Advocacy happens through many mechanisms. The American Library Association (ALA) actively supports U.S. legislation that supports libraries, and fights legislation that will harm libraries in its Legislative Action Center. Here, the ALA provides its members with information about pending legislation, and provides language members can use to send appeals to senators and congressmen. Libraries also advocate for their value through marketing campaigns designed to create awareness of their value. For example, ALA’s Banned Books Week is an ongoing campaign with a yearly program that brings awareness to the issues of censorship. ALA also provides guidance for libraries, such as the Rural Library Toolkit to give small, rural libraries tools for local advocacy. Advocacy can also operate on a personal level, through personal relationships between an organization’s leadership and local members of government, and civic leaders. Staff members are also powerful advocates of an organization’s value. Through their work with patrons and visitors, and their personal relationships within the community, staff members can promote the values of these organizations in a personal way.
Competency Development
Coursework
While most of my experience with the aspects of this competency come from my work in LIBR204, Information Organizations and Management, many of my courses also provided experience, especially with planning tactics. In LIBR204 I demonstrated my understanding of the complex aspects of managing people by examining issues around training staff for new technologies. I worked with a group to write a white paper about this issue, which demonstrated our competency at addressing issues around change management by recommending a professional development training program and peer trainers. I wrote an expert guide on digitization, which outlined the core skills that staff would need for digitization efforts, as well as budgeting and resource needs. I also co-taught a segment on team building strategies, which included an online team-building activity for the class. These projects demonstrate my capability to evaluate management issues, and to implement management strategies with people. The white paper and expert guide on digitization also demonstrate my competency at planning, as both documents provide detailed background information, literature reviews, and logistical information needed as a first step in the planning process.
In LIBR240, Information Technology and Tools, I demonstrated my skills working with marketing tools by creating a website and a blog. In LIBR256, Archives and Manuscripts, I discussed the ways that individual archivists are participating in social media to promote the programs and services of their organizations, and thus distributing the work of marketing across the institution, as well as advocating for the value of archives in a personal way. I debated the costs and benefits of having archivists taking time away from their archival duties to do this work. Thus, I grappled with some of the complex management issues involved with social media work in today’s increasingly digital and distributed-network environments.
I gained a unique perspective on advocacy in the study abroad course about Chinese Libraries that I took with the University of Rhode Island’s Library and Information Science program. In China, libraries do not enjoy the same awareness and recognition that they do in the United States. It was clear to me that the Chinese government was very interested in advocating the value of libraries, and of China’s information culture to those of us visiting from the U.S. I wrote a research paper on the role of rural libraries in bringing China’s rural populations out of illiteracy and poverty. I discovered that the government also must to do a lot of advocacy work and marketing with rural populations to educate them about the value of libraries for their communities. Thus, I gained an international perspective on advocacy in libraries with this work.
In addition to the work in LIBR204, many of my other courses included a planning component. These ranged from institutional planning to project planning. In LIBR284, Electronic Records and in LIBR281, Metadata, I investigated and wrote about several metadata schemata for managing digital objects and digital information. Metadata is a sort of plan for the future preservation and accessibility of such records. (As a colleague stated eloquently at a conference I attended last year, “Metadata is a promise to the future.”) I also learned about the importance of archiving and managing electronic records for future purposes, including legal litigation. In LIBR284, Digitization and Digital Preservation, I worked with a team of students to create a digital archive, which included many planning aspects, such as identifying a core audience, setting goals and a work process, and planning for the work, which involved allocating our time, and in a few cases making decisions to drop aspects of the project because we didn’t have time to complete the work.
Professional Experience
In my professional work I perform all of these tasks to some degree. Usually I do this on a project-based level, although I am very aware of the larger institutional goals that my work addresses, and am conscientious of moving towards those goals that serve the mission of my organization. On a strategic level, I help my manager perform SWOT analysis on potential projects. This helps my manager, and our entire team identify the benefits that can come out of projects, and also identify potential pitfalls and plan for those in advance. I also have managed several projects, which includes working with a small team of co-workers to produce a digital product. I prefer project management that takes a collaborative, team-based approach and have recently been experimenting with a project management style called Agile project management, which is a very iterative and collaborative.
I gained a lot of experience in marketing in a previous position at a museum where I ran a weekly arts and music event. I was responsible for the programming as well as marketing and advertising plan for these events. I helped shape the goals for the project, and worked with local artists and young audiences to bring in music and performance artists that would appeal to those audiences. I created or directed all of the print and radio advertising for the program, as well as printed ephemera and direct mailing campaign. In my current position, I have also been a member of social media team, and thus gained competency using tools such as Facebook and Twitter to reach out to audiences, and speak directly with them to educate them about my organizations programs and services. I also perform advocacy on a personal level on my own personal blog and through Twitter. In these spaces, I use my writing to promote ideas and ideals that I believe are valuable to my community.
Evidence Description
1. Social Media and Organizational Change published conference paper
In this co-written conference paper, I investigated the ways that social media is affecting management structures, and organizational charts in cultural institutions. I authored the paper with three other people, who worked at different museums and cultural institutions, and were in slightly different roles related to social media. With our multiple perspectives, we highlighted some of the ways that social media are changing the ways that staff communicate and work together, and addresses issues such as whether to distribute management of social media content across an organization or to centralize efforts; how to find tactics for educating and training staff about what social media are; and how social media can further the mission, set new expectations for current staffing positions held within the museum, and promote a cultural shift that embraces collaborative, agile ways of interacting with our peers and our audiences.
The authoring of this paper was very collaborative, and all authors contributed equally. I drafted most of the examples from my institution, and also worked closely on the introduction, and the raising awareness section. In this paper, I demonstrate my competency at understanding broad issues with staffing and management that are arising in the 21st century with new technologies. I also demonstrate my ability to advocate for change in my own organization, implement internal marketing campaigns, and to plan for change. Finally, this paper and the presentation we gave at the associated conference, was an act of peer advocacy within our field—we were advocating for change and bringing awareness to new forces at work in our industry.
In LIBR204, Information Organizations and Management, I researched and wrote a guide on digitization for libraries. This guide is a planning document, which can help a library identify the core questions to ask when embarking on a digitization program. The guide provides current tends and standards in the field, as well as recommendations, and issues. This document shows my competency at scanning the literature and current discussions in a realm and identifying core issues and resources, which will help an organization develop more formal plans.
In LIBR204, Information Organizations and Management, I co-authored a whitepaper on the challenges of training library staff in new technologies. The paper discussed the information technology (IT) skills that working librarians are increasingly required to have and makes recommendations for managers who wish to improve these skills in all librarians and staff in their organizations. The idea for this topic came out of interviews our group did with library managers working in special, public, and academic libraries. This was a common issue for all the library managers. Because many libraries do not have dedicated training staff or do not offer regular training in IT, staff members are often left to learn new skills on their own, leading to piecemeal, uneven expertise across the organization. In this paper we describe the background behind the problem at hand, and provide evidence from research studies on job descriptions that show an increase in need of technology skills. We provide recommendations for addressing the problem, which range from establishing training programs, to amending hiring practices.
The whitepaper itself is also an act of advocacy because, as we argue in the paper, we believe this issue is putting the field at risk. Individual libraries, and the library field as a whole, should be concerned about this situation, and we suggested strategies to help managers create an environment where existing staff can learn new IT skills and keep up with fast-paced changes in technology. Thus, by writing this whitepaper, we hoped to educate management about the situation, and give concrete examples of how the issues could be addressed.
I worked collaboratively on this whitepaper with two other students in the course. We formulated our ideas for the whitepaper through e-mail and GChat, where we discussed our interviews, and research we had done, and formulated the core problem for the white paper. We decided that we needed to do some research on current library job descriptions, find out what percentage of current librarians had no technology training, and figure out what specific technology skills are needed in today’s libraries. My role involved creating a search strategy for locating information about technology requirements in job roles for librarians, and performing most of the research and writing up research notes. I drafted the introduction and conclusion, and edited the final paper extensively and formatted it.
Concluding Remarks
Understanding management concepts and being able to use planning techniques are skills that are a requirement for any organization’s management. Yet, even staff persons who are not in management roles can benefit from having firm grasp on these models for structuring work. In my current role, I regularly make plans for project management purposes, and contribute to strategic planning through consultation with my managers. I anticipate that my future professional roles will include a similar aspect of work. I believe strongly that all staff persons should have a working knowledge of the organization’s larger strategic plan, goals, and mission, and use these to guide their own work. Likewise, I have found that understanding management approaches help me navigate issues in my own workplace, something I am sure I will find useful in any future position. These theories provide frameworks for understanding social dynamics in the workplace, and can help employees appreciate the actions of management.
Marketing skills are extremely valuable to any staff in an information organization. I have found through my work in web development that marketing the services and programs I develop is key to success. It has been often said in web development that the idea that you can just “Build it, and they will come” is patently wrong. This is because our work is not physically visible. As my career is focused on work in the digital realm, marketing will always be part of the plan for projects I work on.
In my current role I do a lot of peer advocacy through presentations at conferences, and through publishing on blogs and in social media. I also advocate for for my organization’s mission internally, and am constantly advocating for new models of working together and raising awareness for the ways that technology is changing our working environment. These forms of advocacy I will certainly continue to participate in throughout my career.
References
American Library Association (ALA). (2014). Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/home
Evans, G.E., and Ward, P.L. (2007). Management Basics for Information Professionals. (2nd ed). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.
Wikipedia. (2014). Learning Organization. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization
Last update: March 6, 2014
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