Professor Richard M. Dougherty of the University of Michigan's School of Information and Library Studies will be our guest editor for our discussion on management. Dr. Dougherty is taking the lead in examining our School's approach in presenting management related topics. Dr. Dougherty has taught management at the School for several years. He formerly served as a library administrator at a number of university libraries including Berkeley and Michigan. His interests include library management, economics of publishing, impact of technology on use of information, organizational visioning, and change management. He holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Currently he consults with groups in how to manage change. He believes that managing change, particularly technology in constrained fiscal environments, will be the single greatest challenge library managers face in the years ahead.
Please join us in a discussion of "Management in the Future-oriented Curriculum."
At our School we know that many students, possibly a majority, didn't take our basic management course. Management is not a required course. My conversations with students lead me to conclude that many entering students don't see the relevance of management to their educational programs. I can remember one student saying to me, "If I wanted to be a manager, I'd have gotten an MBA!" I believe it is also true that some students are dissatisfied with the School's approach to teaching management -- a single two credit course in which a range of topics were covered per force superficially. I've never been convinced that I have pegged my presentations at levels that were most relevant to students, i.e., too much theory and not enough attention to relevant skills. I've also had a colleague suggest to me that "management is an acquired taste" and that it will be hard sell to convince many entering students that management is important.
Can you help us?
What is the place of management in a SILS program? How important are organizational skills, e.g., time management and running meetings, and management concepts, e.g., planning, budgeting, structure, etc., to new graduates as they enter the job market? What management and organizational skills employers expect in new graduates? What are the experiences of recent graduates? What advice do recent graduates have to offer those of us who are considering how to reengineer the school's management offerings?
What makes this complex is that new graduate placements are so diverse. They range from a public services librarian in a academic library in a department with anywhere from 4-20 professional colleagues and no supervisory responsibilities to work in a corporate environment as the solo professional (and often the solo employee in the library) to director of a small public library with several paraprofessional and clerical employees who may be significantly older than their new director and have many years of library experience. All of these require varying levels of management skills.
I believe there are two critical skills for any library manager: communication skills (being able to write and speak persuasively -- being able to spell also helps ;-) ) and analytical skills.
For me, being a good manager all boils down to being able to look at a situation, be it budgetary, personnel, cataloging, and be able to break the situation apart and look at it critically and analytically AND then being able to explain the situation (and a resolution if that is what is needed) in writing and in speaking. If ANY librarian at ANY level can't do these competently, then they are going to have trouble managing -- whether it's their [own] time they need to manage, [or it involves] personnel management, budget management, board/administrator management.
How you teach these skills, I don't know. Some seem to have a "knack" for them but for those who weren't born with these skills, it seems they should be teachable ones.
The most difficult employees I have had to supervise in my years as a director were those who rejected management theory, accepted no responsibility for the operation of the library, and refused to participate in the process of change. I hope a course in management would be required in all library schools. It will make the work of directors much easier, and our libraries more responsive to the pressures to change.
Ben Speller said...
"If students have undergraduate or graduate degrees in management or business, then a basic course would not be necessary but students who have not had these educational experience should be required to take a course in management. In a global environment 'common sense' might not be enough."
I would hope that even though a student might have had previous management courses, the a LIS course might offer a unique spin to both the theoretical and the practical orientation to planning, working, collaborating, and project implementation an information agency of some type. Yes, a lot of good management practice comes as common sense or is intuitive to some, but common sense and intuition are not enough.
In my dream LIS course, I envision a curriculum that includes the theoretical foundations of systems theory, as well as organizational behavior, communication, learning, and change. The theory could be grounded in practical exercises such as:
Graduates are generally overwhelmed by the management issues that present themselves in the field, whether the arena be a library setting or the private sector. There are high expectations for recent graduates (for example in my first full-year appointment, I was expected to launch a new Document Delivery unit in an academic library) and the range of areas that require attention can be quite staggering -- staff supervision, budget management, systems analysis, evaluation of vendors, cost analysis. While UC Berkeley had a required management course, it was nearly impossible to cover all the potential areas with any degree of thoroughness. Additionally, and this would be an excellent area for attention in an SLIS program, it was extremely difficult for many students to take the covered material to heart. Once hired, many fellow students reported to me that they had "covered" a particular theme in their management class, and wished now that they had grasped the issues better while in class. Part of this has to do with the job market, wherein many graduates cannot accurately assess what position they might inhabit and thus cannot prepare perfectly, but there remains a gap of comprehension in the management course learning process.
Some of the reluctance among the students to education in management issues is illustrated by the phrase, mentioned in an earlier post, "but I don't want to be a manager" but once in the field, the need to know how to run a project, allocate resources, involve colleagues, etc., is obvious. Most graduates do a whole lot of fast learning in this area in the first year or two of their jobs.
My own personal view is that a clear understanding of information at a theoretical level -- how the need is expressed, how it may be addressed by a system or the resources used, how it can be delivered and used -- makes an appreciation of a project's or service's process more important and salient. Then the effort is directed towards bringing means to bear on the particular goal, and it is much easier to harness the detailed mechanisms when the goals are clearly defined. I have not met many well-trained SLIS graduates who could not research resources and evaluate vendors, do whatever was necessary in a management sense once they had established and defined the primary goal(s). Judging from much of the success of UCB's graduates, who in increasing numbers work on extremely sophisticated projects involving information technology, this has to do with a sound theoretical basis for their study of information. Much management success emerges from those graduates with strong confidence and independence, qualities enhanced when the value of the profession is elevated, but this is perhaps a topic best left for another session.
I have found the most difficult employees to manage are those who reject management -- period. It's important to develop an appreciation for management's perspective. That's why I encourage new librarians to accept supervisory assignments; to take responsibility for a pot of money, however small, and spend it effectively, down to the penny (but no further!). Because even if you wind up with no management responsibilities of your own, you will surely BE managed by others. I believe it is part of one's professional responsibility to contribute to that management relationship in a way that makes it mutually satisfying, and beneficial to the overall organization.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute.
One thought is to have more than one management course -- maybe one with the title "Management for the Non-manager" and another one "Management of Libraries." The curriculum of these courses would differ, since your targeted audiences would have different needs. A clearly written course description would be an absolute necessity.
I took a management course when I was in school, although it was actually an overview of all the "in" methods of managing employees, motivating, etc., of the time. I found it to be, for the most part, a time- and schedule-filler only, even though it was a required course. I have had little need for the information learned in that course, since management methods have changed so radically in the late '80s and into the '90s.
So a management course of any kind should, instead of examining specific methods of management, rather concentrate on developing those skills that can be transferred and used in any situation, management level or not.
There are those lucky enough to become a "director" of a small library as their first job. Management training will get them hired, and help them relate to their board of trustees, city council, etc. in terms these bodies are familiar with (as opposed to confusing them with "librarianese").
If students become Librarian I's in a larger library, management skills will help them get promoted. Once they are out of library school, chances for management training will vary from employer to employer. Some do good staff development, but with others it is hit-or-miss, or absent entirely. Chances for the librarian to seek outside training will vary by location. In all these libraries, however, displaying good management skills are a prerequisite for moving up.
Sept. 24 - Oct. 7
Management in the ILS curriculum
Guest moderator: Dick Dougherty
Oct. 8 - 21
Less-than-graduate education
Guest moderator: Jim Curtis
Oct. 22 - Nov. 4
Life-long learning
Guest moderator: Ray Metz
Nov. 5 - 18
Culture clashes
Guest moderator: Judith Segal
Nov. 19 - Dec. 2
Ethics
Guest moderator: Steve Wooldridge
Dec. 3 - 18
Producing leaders
Guest moderator: Peter Underwood
Dec.19 - Jan. 3
Open
Jan 7 - 20
Functioning in a political environment
Guest moderator: Bruce E. Daniels
Jan. 21 - Feb. 3
Relationship of theory and practice in information-intensive environments
Guest moderator: William Liebi
Feb. 4 - 17
Global information systems and services
Guest moderator: Pauline Cochrane
We will have another open discussion from Dec. 19 and Jan. 3. I have collected topics from CRISTAL-ED members, some of whom have already contributed as guest editors themselves, and I will ask for volunteers to guest edit these and other topics. Thanks again and keep new topic suggestions rolling in.
But the most important part of a manager's role is to know what he/she (hereinafter referred to as "they") is doing. That is, what are they "managing" and why?
Answer this question and you find out who your customers are; ask them what they need and how best you can deliver it; act on their responses. You'll find that you have an excellent, well-used, well-supported library which is solidly rooted in the community it serves. And if you are a really good "manager," your hand in these things will be near invisible -- it will be your staff who get all the kudos, because they will be doing it all.
There is really no middle-ground either. You cannot elect to be simply a "doer" (cataloging, shelving, etc) and decline to accept any "managerial" responsibility. As a very minimum you must manage yourself, and the "processes" (see Deming) you run (cataloging, shelving, etc).
The question should not be "what do librarians need to know about management" as much as it should be "how should librarians manage."
I'm tempted to exhort you to get your noses out of your books and see how the world outside functions. Instead, I'll exhort you to get your noses into some of the books on management. Drucker is a little heavy, and not just for beginners; start off with Ken Blanchard's "One Minute Manager", and then move on to Tom Peters "Thriving on Chaos" and Dr W. Edwards Deming's Out of the Crisis.
These will provide a valuable insight into what a "manager's" real function is, and will place in context the trappings of sterile management (budgets, time sheets, reports, etc.) which I suspect is turning many of you off.
At the end of your readings, you should be of the mind that the best metaphor for a manager is as the "coach" of his team. I think it is fun to coach a winning team -- hope you do too!
I would extend Mike Harrison's sporting analogy to compare a manager with a top sportsperson, retaining her/his ranking only so long as s/he displays superior form and fits the strategy.
I recommend Gerald Kushel's Reaching the Peak Performance Zone.
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