CHAPTER 7
STRATEGIC PLANNING
The Practice of Innovation and Strategic Thinking
Strategy without process is little more than a wish list.
––Robert Filek1
When people in large organizations hear the words strategic plan, there is likely a collective groan. Many have a strategic planning process, with an emphasis on process. A strategic plan is intended to be concrete so that everyone in the organization has a map to follow. The plan is meaningless if it does not inform the priorities or actions of the organization. But since it is immutable and because it is usually approved or directed from the top, it is difficult to change or to adapt; and it is almost impossible to be agile from the front lines.
Strategy, on the other hand, is less about planning and more about a way of thinking or engaging with the environment. Strategic thinking is embedded in the culture; it manifests intentionally in strategic-planning activities. Strategic planning is the concrete manifestation of innovation, a way for the organization to evolve and develop in view of a big picture.
Related to strategic thinking and critical to the process of strategic planning is the concept of systems thinking. This is the acknowledgement that many factors influence a situation, similar to an ecosystem where plants, animals, the weather, geology, and many other details all influence each other. This is a fundamental principle with regard to strategic planning because it means that solutions are complex and results may be unforeseen. Senge discusses the systems-thinking model and postulates eleven laws that provide a helpful framework:
1. “Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions…
2. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back…
3. Behavior grows better before it grows worse…
4. The easy way out usually leads back in…
5. The cure can be worse than the disease…
6. Faster is slower…
7. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space…
8. Small changes can produce big results—but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious…
9. You can have your cake and eat it too—but not at once…
10. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants…
11. There is no blame.”2
While his laws are rather pithy, Senge’s points are highly relevant to the strategic-planning process and uncover some issues that are largely overlooked and impact the success of the plan and its outcomes.
Despite Filek’s warning, which has been echoed by many leaders over the years, creating a strategy without creating a plan is exactly what a lot of organizations do. How many times have you sat in what seems like the same strategic planning meeting and heard the same old lines:
• What is the library’s mission?
• What are our values?
• Where do we want to be in 10 years?
• How do we get there?
• What is working and what isn’t?
Once the meeting (or possibly even a more lengthy retreat) is over, nothing is really accomplished beyond what was said in the meeting, with the exception of scheduling another meeting next year to repeat the same process. No decisions are made, no data gathered or evidence presented, no goals fixed or timeline set. The meeting is attended by a group of managers and colleagues who may be so far removed from the library’s service points that they are guessing at the answers. The strategic planning meeting seems so scripted and repetitive that it would almost be sufficient to record it once and rewatch it the next year. Far too often leaders are confused about what a strategic plan is and spend little, if any, time thinking about the plan’s process and implementation. Service leaders know that in order to think ahead they need to look back.3 This goes beyond thinking about how to progress from where an organization currently is to determining what the future state or desirable conclusion is and what the steps are to get there. This big picture thinking is not meant to advocate a Machiavellian perspective but rather to assert that the actions in the interim should align with the end in mind and that they should also be consistent with personal and organizational serviceoriented values. That said, the idea that it is the journey, not the destination is also not desirable. With a focus on the process, nothing gets accomplished, as exemplified by committees that meet regularly but never have any outcomes or impact.
Also of significance, employees hate to feel that their time was wasted, which can be perceived as a lack of respect. Engaging employees on a plan to move the organization forward but neglecting to follow through and implement the plan may create perception on the part of employees that the plan was not worthy of implementation and engender feelings of distrust and resentment toward the leader. This is another example of saying one thing and doing something else.
However, following through also reaches beyond strategic planning, encompassing not only the decision that the leader makes but relating it to the values that she promotes. For example, if a leader claims that everyone should feel comfortable to try new things and take risks, she must stand by this risk-taking behavior, creating a safe environment for employees to take risks and fail. Conger and Kanungo, for example, believe that during the implementation stage of change, charismatic leaders rely on “unconventional means and exhibit behaviors of self-sacrifice and personal risk-taking to align commitment from followers and to empower them to act.”4
What service leaders realize, in terms of sustainability, is that good intentions (or in the meeting case below, words) mean nothing; it is actions that will move their organization forward, and these actions are achieved through the development and implementation of a strategic plan. Service leaders know that “strategy is about selection of goals and objectives, which is what makes every single strategy unique in nature.”5 A strategic plan is not a document used solely to trot out to upper administration when the dean’s supervisor wants to see it. A strategic plan is a guiding force that signals to the individuals in the organization what direction they should be heading. This is why strategic plans must be regularly reviewed, evaluated, and updated to address the ever-changing environment. Drucker supports this continual review when he states, “strategic planning is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial risk-taking decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity; organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions; and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organized, systematic feedback.”6 Each of these elements is critical and dependent on the other: planning, implementation, and assessment, which then feeds back into the planning process.
SERVICE LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE
Strategic planning can bring out the worst in organizations and individuals. For example, a university library has recently hired a new director, Evan, and he put in place a management team by virtue of hires through searches, hiring individuals from his previous institution, and promoting internal candidates. As with all new administrations, there is a concerted effort to redefine the priorities in view of the new leadership—essentially, remake the organization in their image. For purposes of inclusion, it was decided that a strategic planning retreat, including the heads of all the units, would jump-start these efforts. The venue was set outside of the library to put people at ease, and each unit head was instructed to bring ideas, issues, and concerns that they had gathered from their units. At the retreat, they broke up into round tables to address overarching topics; the effort was to identify the major areas of focus through discussion and consensus. Instead, what occurred was a lot of posturing and protection of sacred cows, with unit heads pushing their own agenda and ignoring the big picture. Because of the competing agenda and lack of vision, there are no action items and no outcomes. But in six months, another retreat will be scheduled.
Libraries, like many organizations, use strategic planning as a technique to plan today where they want to be in the future. However, before a library can plan where it wants to be, it needs to assess where it is and how it got to where it currently is. The plan, or strategic plan as it is called in the business world, is the document that communicates to the library employees what the library’s goals are and what actions the library as a whole needs to take so that it can achieve these goals. Strategic planning is one management activity that libraries can use like a Global Positioning System (GPS) to lead them to where they want to be and to help a library know what actions to make to achieve its vision as well as when the library is ultimately successful in achieving its goal. In short, a strategic plan will help a service leader and her library team set their priorities in order to strengthen the library’s operations, and it also will help identify where and how the library should focus its energy and resources so that all the library employees are working toward a common library vision. According to Riggs, “Unlike traditional planning, which normally results in a neatly bound document collecting dust on a shelf, strategic planning is more dynamic with annual updates and primary emphasis on strategies (courses of action designed to achieve goals and objectives).”7 Consequently, as stated above, a strategic plan is a never-finished document because the plan is always evolving and the strategic-planning process never ending. A service leader recognizes this and must be willing to adjust the organization’s strategic plan in response to the changing environment in order to include new ideas to strengthen the library’s operations.
THE ATTRIBUTES OF A STRATEGIC PLAN
The first step of a strategic-planning process relates to gathering intelligence to help shape the direction of the process. Organizations should generally look at doing a needs assessment of their primary clientele; in the case of libraries, this may be a survey, focus groups, or another type of information gathering about their patrons. It is an essential step for service-driven organizations.
Although the features that make up a strategic plan vary depending on the organization, according to Riggs there are nine common attributes that help to frame most strategic plans. These nine elements are: vision statement, mission statement, goals, objectives, strategy and timeline, responsibility, explanation of work, resource allocation, and assessment.8
A vision statement tells not only the organization’s employees but also its stakeholders what and where the library wants to be in the future. Vision statements should be general and are a declaration of the library’s key goals for the midterm and long-term future. However, since the library’s environment is changing so rapidly due to the technological advancements, library administrators should not try to project beyond 10 years in the organization’s future. Vision statements can range from one line to several pages and provide the employees with more than just what the library would like to achieve or accomplish; they also provide an inspiration for the day-to-day operations of a library and are used to mold the library’s strategic decisions. Vision statements help to unify all employees to achieve a common goal so that they can be more productive. This is an example of a vision statement from the Alzheimer’s Association: “Our vision is a world without Alzheimer’s.”9
Unlike vision statements, mission statements are a brief but succinct statement that defines the present state or purpose of the library for its employees and stakeholders. Mission statements generally answer three common questions about why the library exists and what it focuses on:
• What does the library do?
• What community does it serve?
• How does the library do what it does?
Most academic libraries, for example, generally state in their mission statements that they support and aid the academic institution’s curriculum, instruction, and research mission.
Goals and objectives quite often are used interchangeably, but they are not synonymous. Goals build on both the vision and mission statements by bringing a sense of order and priority to the library’s actions. They are written down and clearly specify the library’s purpose. Goals give the library administration and its employees a sense of a long-term direction by specifying in detail the library’s long-range priorities. One important point to make is that goals are not ideals. It would seem strange, for instance, for an academic library to create a goal that says it wants to develop the most prestigious music collection in a specific state when it doesn’t have a music department. This goal is even more unrealistic and unattainable because the library is facing cuts to its acquisitions budget. Goals must be attainable and specific enough so that they can be converted into measurable objectives. Objectives are short-term intentions that need to be clearly stated, measurable, and verifiable. Objectives are commonly written in relation to a specific result with an assigned date of completion so that the library can point to these completed objectives as landmarks in achieving their overarching goals.
Strategy, within the context of an articulated plan, is the meat of all strategic plans because it is where the library specifies how it will achieve its goals and objectives. It is in the strategy section of the plan where the steps to implementing the strategic plan are spelled out. This section identifies who will do what and how they will do it. This is where the rubber hits the road. Service leaders know that one strategy is not a one-glove-fits-all type of situation and as a result generates different strategies for each goal and objective the library wishes to achieve.
Timelines are critical when carrying out strategies. Without specifying how long it should take to complete a specific task, library administrators can create problems and affect the possibility of the strategy being achieved. Those responsible for completing the task can view the lack of timeline as a lack of importance to the organization and consequently put off attempting to work on the task because they believe it is not a high priority. However, when a timeline is attached to a specific project completion, team members see that the organization values the task and work toward completing it. However, it is important to remember that when setting a timeline to carry out the task that the time allotted needs to be reasonable and doable. Take, for example, a staff member assigned a goal of recataloging all two million AACRII records in their catalog to RDA records in one month. This goal is completely unreasonable and cannot be accomplished in the allotted time period. Setting such an unreasonable time frame not only will anger your team members but will also create a sense of distrust in the leader’s understanding of what the team does. Employees believe that the leader should have known that it was impossible to accomplish such a mammoth task in such a short time frame.
Having consistent, clear, and agreed-upon expectations of job responsibility is important to ensure that library employees are not overcommitted and don’t become overwhelmed when trying to complete one or more strategies in a brief time. As stated above, realistic timelines help with limiting this feeling of overcommitment, but understanding an employee’s workload is also critical. Libraries struggle with understanding and defining workload, particularly for librarians since all too often we ourselves cannot define what we do. Adding to this issue revolves around the saying: “if you want something done, ask a busy person.”10 There is a lot of truth in this statement, which is generally attributed to Benjamin Franklin, since the busier a person is, the better that person has learned to manage his time. However, continually giving a busy person more work assignments can cause employee burnout and create resentment as the employee looks around at the people who seem to be doing less and often spending most of their time gossiping around the water cooler or counting down the minutes until it the five o’clock whistle. This resentment may increase when a part-time leadership opportunity in another department arises, such as an interim associate dean of faculties’ position, but her team leader is unable to define what her workload is and so, the departments could not agree on what part-time looked like and the time commitment. As a result, the opportunity vanishes, leaving the employee upset and disillusioned with the organization.
Resources required to accomplish the strategic plan relate to the assets a library has to use when implementing its strategic plan. Resources can be human capital, equipment, finances, and even information technology. To accomplish any task, resources must be identified, committed, and allocated to get the job done. Far too often, library administration underestimates what it will take to accomplish a specific task. The fact that library administration is often farther removed from the actual day-to-day running of the organization results in a lack of true understanding of their team’s workload and processes in the organization. Leaders who don’t discuss with their teams what is needed to implement the strategic plan can underestimate what it takes, resulting in a failed implementation.
Annually, assessments occur when the service leader looks back at all she and her team have done to achieve the library’s goals in order to identify what worked and what didn’t. It is a time when the objectives that were achieved are removed from the plan and new objectives added. Where strategies failed, the service leader identifies another strategy that she feels might work better, basing it on the information that has come to light while reassessing the plan. However, there should also be checkpoints at different stages of a project or initiative; this allows the ability to evaluate whether efforts are on track, make course corrections if needed, or adapt if circumstances have changed.
Now that we have examined the nuts and bolts of a strategic plan and have clarified the basic terms, such as vision, mission, objectives, and goals, and how they relate to the organization as a whole, we will take a look at the strategic plan design and how it is developed.
DESIGNING THE STRATEGIC PLAN
Developing any strategic plan is a complex process, particularly for those institutions, such as libraries, where change is constant and fear of the outcome of this change brings out distrust and suspicion in some people. To aid in relieving this suspicion, service leaders may take the step and “listen to themselves” in order to become aware of their biases and listen to their employees to be aware of the work environment. By doing this service leaders are helping to address this distrust; however, no matter what steps a service leader takes, there will always be a small number of people who are going to be resistant to the change. The key for a service leader is to understand the reason for this resistance. One very basic reason harkens back to the discussion in chapter 3 discussing trust or, more specifically, the lack of trust. After all, don’t we always say that in order to avoid mistakes in the future we must learn from the past? Well, if the employee was burned in the past, wouldn’t she learn from this experience and avoid it in the future? Perhaps it was Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22, who said it best: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” This statement has become one that people live by. But in order to break the cycle of mistrust and create an environment open to change and innovation, a transparent strategic-planning process must be developed hand-in-hand with those affected by the future change.
A simple literature search on strategic planning process models or strategic plan design brings to light the plethora of articles describing the many different strategic-planning process models and the importance of transparency to the process. The reason for this, particularly for libraries, is that the fast pace of technological change within the profession has made it challenging for service leaders to anticipate what may be coming and position the library in a way to meet this change. As it became apparent that web technology was transforming libraries and would continue to do so, the buzz word at the beginning of the 1990s was agile. By the latter half of the 1990s and into the 2000s, the idea of being agile was scoffed at, and strategic planning was largely dismissed as unrealistic due to the need to be responsive to the rapidly changing environment, particularly for large libraries. Despite this dismissive behavior toward strategic planning, there were a number of academic library leaders who recognized the need to redefine their role on campus so that the library and its services would become more relevant to its users. For example, Stoffle et al. stressed this need, stating, “The choice is clear. Change now and choose our futures. Change later, or not at all, and have no future.”11
The reason for this shift in attitude was largely due both to internal and external drivers. Some internal drivers included shrinking budgets, new initiatives, and service improvement efforts. External drivers included the proliferation of technology, increasing patron demand, increased calls for accountability and assessment, and other economic concerns, such as serials inflation. Even generational issues among employees had and continue to have a profound impact on libraries in terms of employees’ and supervisors’ expectations, particularly around human resource practices related to job performance expectations, evaluation, and rewards. As a result librarians are seeing an increase in the use of strategic-planning models such as environmental scans, an exercise that examines the factors that may impact an organization or effort. Environmental scans can take various forms, the most common being: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis; and STEP Diagrams to help develop a library strategic plan. The STEP analysis or diagram was originally developed by Francis J. Aguilar to provide a lens for developing an environmental scan, specifically in terms of economic, social, technological, and political factors. This model has evolved over time to incorporate various other aspects, the most common being legal and security.12
SWOT, which will be discussed in detail below, was developed in the 1960s by Albert Humphrey to help identify and evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing a business, including the services a business offers and the people who deliver and receive those services. STEP diagrams, on the other hand, are designed by library administration to illustrate the string of progressive steps necessary to carry out a specific work process or procedure. However, as you can see from figure 7.1, most of these different models have a number of similar qualities, or process steps, that walk a service leader through the strategic-planning process. The model used in this chapter is adapted from Morgenstern and Jones’s Strategic Planning Process model but has been altered to reflect the servant leader’s approach to the strategic-planning process.13 There are nine steps, spelled out below, that may be overlooked since leaders often skip steps and jump into the SWOT analysis part of the model, without having an accurate and thorough understanding of the importance of listening during the gathering-data steps.14 In addition, some leaders completely put aside the vision statement of the library, attempting to implement a strategic plan without thinking about where the organization wants to be in the future.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
When an organization is facing a crisis, such as when there is a surprising negative event or unforeseen consequence of an event which could threaten an organization, it requires a service leader to be innovative and make a quick decision to minimize the damage of the event. Pearson and Clair believe that “Organizational crisis management is a systematic attempt by organizational members with external stakeholders to avert crises or to effectively manage those that do occur. Organizational crisis management effectiveness is evidenced when potential crises are averted or when key stakeholders believe that the success outcomes of short-and long-range impacts of crises outweigh the failure outcomes.”15
SITUATION ANALYSIS, ENVIRNOMENTAL SCAN, AND USER/NONUSERS SCAN
Situation analysis is the first step of the strategic planning process as the service leader starts reviewing the library’s mission statement and then begins the process of gathering data from all of its stakeholders, including its employees and patrons, in view of this mission statement. This is important because service leaders need to analyze and understand their library’s own current state and environment, and this is done in three different stages: situation analaysis, environmental scan, and user/nonuser scan. These three data-gathering steps are critical for performing the SWOT analysis. The first data-gathering step is situation analysis, which deals with the library’s internal environment. The results of this analysis should highlight the library’s internal strengths and weaknesses. This analysis is where a service leader discovers which library services are actually working and which are not. Historically, leaders make the mistake of rushing to the SWOT analaysis first, assuming that they know what is working and what is not working in their library. However, as discussed in chapter 3 on Conscientiousness and chapter 4 on Building Rapport, the service leader does not assume anything and listens to those around her. Often it is hard to hear what your library’s weakness is, and some leaders prefer to ignore this information, chalking it up to the opinion of disgruntled employees. Nevertheless, it is critical to listen objectively to those around you.
The second data-gathering step is the environmental scan stage. This is the part of the data-gathering process that looks at the library’s external environment. It is this step that describes the opportunities and threats to the organization, the OT in SWOT. The threats identify what will undermine a library service if it is not addressed through change. It is during this stage that possible competitors of the library are also identified. Opportunities, on the other hand, highlight what the library can do to take advantange of the changing environment in order to improve or develop a potential service. According to Morgenstern and Jones, many strategic plans fail because the external environment step of the planning process is not deep or critical enough because it is poorly executed and often rooted in the present and the familiar while not probing enough into the future possiblities.16
The third step in the data-collection stage involves the library’s users and nonusers. Specifically, the library must examine usage and behavior patterns as well as users’ perceptions of the library and the services it offers. Often libraries struggle with gathering this information because they find it difficult to understand why their services are not used. It is hard for any librarian to hear students say that libraries are irrelevant and Google has everything, which of course it doesn’t.
Once all this critical information is gathered, the library leader can begin to analyze the data objectivly using a strategic-planning tool, such as SWOT. It is here that one places all the information together and begins asking the strategic questions. However, if the library leaders ignore the critical data-gathering steps because they assume they know this information and consequenlty move directly into the SWOT analysis, the SWOT analysis will fail because the data used in it will be corrupt and biased by the leaders’ perception.
STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND THREATS (SWOT)
Using the data gathered during the first three stages of the strategic planning process, the service leader begins the fourth stage, the SWOT analysis. This analysis tool has become one of the most widely used strategic planning tools and can be used by service leaders to look at their library and its services objectively. As the service leader plots the data gathered during the first three phases of the stragetic planning model, he will be able to see an action plan. Below is an example of a completed SWOT analysis.
Generally, it is presented in a grid, with strengths opposite weaknesses, describing the aspects internal to the organizations, as illustrated in the example below:
Strengths
1. Staff and faculty are stable, committed, diverse, and educated
2. Library building is centrally located
3. Library has a comprehensive collection of both print and online material
4. Space is attractive and inviting
5. Coffee shop makes library inviting
6. Library has a strong interlibrary loan department
Weaknesses
1. Lack of managerial depth and talent
2. Plagued with internal operating problems
3. Space is tight and has few outlets for computers
4. Inventory system needs to be updated
5. Weak leaders with poor communication skills
6. Organizational culture is fragmented, causing a decrease in staff and faculty motivation and support for the library
7. Relative to other libraries of the same size, staffing numbers are too low to support current services
8. Lack of specialized personnel
9. Outdated organizational structure
10. Lack of service-level agreements
11. Funding cuts have forced library to reduce its purchase of foreign language materials
Opportunities and threats are usually presented in the bottom half of the grid to indicate the external environmental factors that should be considered in doing an environmental scan.
Opportunities
1. Increase wireless access in library
2. Create additional opportunities for library programming and services
3. Increase usage of cloud computing
4. Diversify services
5. Promote open access
6. Build storage facility to allow library to alleviate stack space to increase users space
7. Purchase new inventory system
Threats
1. Changing patron base
2. Technological advances
3. Unfocused message of library vision and mission
4. Poor communication has created an active grapevine that passes gossip
5. Lack of priorities
6. Hostile security environment
7. Decrease in library funding
8. User’s impression that the library is obsolete
9. Strategic planning at the university level does not involve the library in the process
10. Increased cost for electronic books and journals
When filling out the SWOT grid it is important to note that strengths and weaknesses are often internal factors to your library, while opportunities and threats are often related to external factors. The word often is used in the previous sentence because service leaders recognize that they must consider their library’s strengths and weaknesses both from an internal perspective and from the library’s patron’s point of view. In addition, the opportunities and threats do not always come from external factors but could come from within the library itself, such as disgruntled employees and poor library management.
When assessing a library’s strengths and weaknesses, a service leader looks at the data collected and places it in the context of the library’s users’ needs not just of the library’s needs. It is necessary to ask questions like: what does the library do well and where is it falling short of its mission? Service leaders achieve this understanding by constantly considering both the view of the library and the view of its patrons as they fill out the strengths and weakness section of the analysis. While filling out the strength section, service leaders need to be realistic and truthful. Once completed, the grid should state what the library’s advantages are and what it does well. Often the strengths section seems easy to fill out because it is easy to identify what your team is doing well. Weaknesses, however, are not so easy to identify because people tend to gloss over their weaknesses or, worse, avoid identifying them because they either don’t know what they are doing wrong or don’t want to know. When incorrectly identifying weaknesses, the library only perpetuates the problems and further damages the organization. The weaknesses section should answer the questions: How can the library improve? What are we not doing well? What should we stop doing?
All too often leaders get lost in the first two sections of a SWOT analysis and never get to the opportunities and threats sections of the model. This lack of attention to the external environment causes the library to be less effective in delivering valuable services to its patrons: the positive event may create an opportunity to enhance service or improves processes that are overlooked; the negative event may pose a threat that is unanticipated and might disrupt valuable services for its patrons.17 When trying to identify your library’s opportunities, examine your strengths to see if they open up any opportunities and also look at your weaknesses to see if eliminating the weakness will open up an opportunity for the library. Service leaders ask themselves questions such as: What are possible opportunities for the library and what are interesting trends we see in the library science field? Libraries have experienced a lot of change in the past couple of decades, and it only seems to be accelerating. Due to new technology, the evolving political and economic climate, and demands for increasing accountability from decision-makers and users alike, change has become the one constant. This makes it much more difficult to anticipate what the future will hold and therefore makes it challenging to plan long-term initiatives. However, it is the responsibility of the service leader to make these efforts and help create a plan that is adaptable to change. In spite of that, it is not uncommon to hear an administrator laugh at the concept of planning for the future because there is just too much change. While it is true that there is change, this attitude neither inspires confidence nor provides guidance for growth.
The fourth section of a SWOT analysis is threats. This section focuses on the external factors that are beyond the library’s control and place the library and its services at risk. Take for example the establishment of the internet; it was believed that the internet would be the end of libraries since all items, it was believed, would be available on the internet. Was it truly the end of libraries, or did it just change the way libraries deliver their services? Although libraries have no control over these types of external threats, it is important for service leaders to have strategic plans to address them and to use them as a possible opportunity. To help identify threats to library service, leaders can pose questions such as these: What obstacles does the library currently face and what are the possible obstacles in the future? Which other libraries and information service companies are our competitors? How is technology threatening or helping the library? Can any of the library’s weaknesses seriously threaten it or can they be used as an opportunity?
DEVELOPING STRATEGIES
Once the SWOT analysis is completed, the service leader begins the process of reviewing the data and developing both short-and long-term strategies to maximize the library’s strengths while minimizing its weaknesses. This is achieved by examining how the library’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats might inform one another and utilizing these intersections to come up with ways to help the organization. This is done by asking the following questions:
1. Which of the library’s strengths identified in the SWOT analysis can be used to maximize the opportunities identified?
2. How can the library’s strengths identified in the SWOT analysis be used to minimize the threats identified?
3. What actions can be taken to minimize the library’s weaknesses identified in the SWOT analysis by using the opportunities identified?
4. How can the library’s weaknesses identified in the SWOT analysis be minimized to avoid the threats identified?
Take, for example, the list of strengths identified in the sample completed SWOT Analysis grid. Can any of those strengths be used to maximize the items listed under the library’s opportunities? Can those strengths also be used to minimize the threats identified in the analysis? A service leader would next look at the opportunities identified in the SWOT analysis to help develop strategies that minimize the weaknesses that have the possibility of becoming future threats. After completing this step, the service leader will be able not only to identify and define the strategies the library will use to move forward but also to spell out more clearly the library’s vision, its short-and long-term objectives, the goals to achieve specific objectives, and its implementation plan to achieve its goals. Once the plan is implemented and goals are met, it is important to remember to review the progress of the strategic plan in order to assess its successes and failures and to adjust the plan where necessary.
ASSESSING THE LIBRARY’S STRATEGIC PLAN
Historically, far too often library administrators have skipped over the assessment of their library’s strategic plan, thinking that since they followed an organized process, the plan is successful. Not so. Assessment and accountability are not just a couple of buzzwords used by academic administration in order to appease those who pay the bills. It is a critical step in discovering if the library is moving in the right direction to fulfill its mission and reach its vision. Although examined in more detail in chapter 9, assessment as it relates to strategic planning needs to be briefly considered below.
As stated above, all too often assessment is an afterthought in the strategic planning process, something that is tacked on at the end of the process or effort. This is problematic for a number of reasons; these are the two most significant:
• Without some sort of continuous monitoring or evaluation, there is no way to make a mid-course correction due to new events or unanticipated results.
• If assessment is not a fundamental assumption and an integral part of the strategic planning process, then it is unlikely that the library administrator will know if the strategic plan is working.
In order to avoid skipping the assessment step of the strategic planning process, service leaders can utilize assessment models. One such model is the ADDIE model, named for the steps involved: analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate. ADDIE is a learning theory model that came out of the military; its core assumes a repetitive approach to assessment as it relates to projects and strategic planning.18 Each step of the ADDIE model advocates a review or assessment check, even prior to the overall program or project evaluation. This establishes that the criteria for evaluation are relevant and rest on informed decisions.
In libraries it is not uncommon for the criteria for evaluation to be based on metrics that are easily available, but these metrics may not be as relevant for the decision-making process. For example, what does the number of books cataloged in a library say about the activity of the library? While it does describe activity within one area, it may not be representative of service demand, usage, or even quality of performance. However, libraries may report those metrics because they are relatively uncomplicated and easily obtained. Obtaining significant and representative data takes planning and should be a fundamental part of the strategic planning process. Assessment data also needs to be tied to the plan’s strategic goals so that this data can inform the success of those efforts or indicate changes that may need to be made.
The initial analysis or mid-term evaluation is also valuable in terms of budgeting or resource allocation, staffing, and organizational structure. It can help answer concerns about whether there are enough and/or the appropriate resources for the effort to succeed. The assessment might even help to indicate whether it is worth the expenditure of effort to continue.
REFLECTIONS ON STRATEGIC PLANNING: TOOLS FOR DEVELOPMENT
1. Think about your mission (either at an individual or unit level). Who are your patrons? What are their needs? And how do those answers inform the mission?
2. Draft a SWOT.
3. List your library’s strongest attributes.
a. List the things your library does that no other library or company does.
b. List what your library patrons like best about your library and its services.
c. List the areas of your library where you are facing fiscal constraints and where these constraints are affecting performance.
d. List other areas that need improvement.
e. List what your library patrons would like to see changed in the library.
f. List all the things your library could do if it had the proper funding.
g. List all the things your library could do if it took advantage of current technologies and advancements.
h. List how your strengths could help achieve the opportunities listed above.
i. List what could be and what currently is negatively impacting your library.
j. List what library services are being offered to your library patrons by other companies or institutions.
k. List what could, in the future, or what currently is creating a weakness in your library that may make you at risk for future funding cuts.19
4. A classic question to ask is: Where do you want the organization to be in five years (or 10 or … )? This provides the general direction for the organization (or individual) and allows the creation of milestones to achieve this vision.
5. Think of a project in which you have been involved. Was there a time in that project when a mid-term evaluation or milestone check would ultimately have made it more successful?
NOTES
1. “10 Quotes About Strategy,” http://sweetmanager.blogspot.com/2013/05/10-quotes-about-strategy.html.
2. Peter M. Senge and Joel Suzuki, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York, NY: Currency Doubleday, 1994), 57–67.
3. Richard N. Haass, The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to be Effective in Any Unruly Organization (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1999), 46.
4. Jay A. Conger, Rabindra N. Kanungo, Sanjay T. Menon, and Purnima Mathur, “Measuring Charisma: Dimensionality and Validity of the Conger-Kanungo Scale of Charismatic Leadership,” Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences 14, no. 3 (2009): 291.
5. Svafa Grönfeldt and Judith Strother, Service Leadership: The Quest for Competitive Advantage (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006), 96.
6. Peter R. Drucker, Management Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (Oxford: Butterworth Hienemann, 1974), 120.
7. Donald E. Riggs, “Visionary Leadership,” in Leadership and Academic Libraries, eds. Terrence F. Mech and Gerard B. McCabe (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 58.
8. Ibid., 59–60.
9. Alzheimer’s Association website, www.alz.org.
10. Jerome Agel and Walter D. Glanze, Pearls of Wisdom: A Harvest of Quotations from All Ages (New York, NY: Harper Row, 1987), 6.
11. Carla Stoffle, Robert Renaud, and Jerilyn R. Veldof, “Choosing our Futures,” College & Research Libraries 57, no. 3 (May 1996): 224.
12. Francis Joseph Aguilar, Scanning the Business Environment (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1967).
13. Jim Morgenstern and Rebecca Jones, “Library Strategic Planning: Voyage of Starship Enterprise or Spruce Goose?” Feliciter 58, no. 5 (October 2012):12–14.
14. Ibid.
15. Christine M. Pearson and Judith A. Clair, “Reframing Crisis Management,” The Academy of Management Review 23, no. 1 (1998): 61.
16. Jim Morgenstern and Rebecca Jones, “Library Strategic Planning: Voyage of Starship Enterprise or Spruce Goose?” Feliciter 58, no. 5 (October 2012): 12–14.
17. O. Ferrell, M. Hartline, G. Lucas, D. Luck, Marketing Strategy (Orlando, FL: Dryden Press, 1998).
18. Robert K. Branson et al., Interservice Procedures for Instructional Systems Development. Executive Summary and Model (Florida State University Tallahassee Center for Educational Technology, 1975), www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a019486.pdf.
19. SWOT ANALYSIS: Your Library’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, www.ala.org/advocacy/swot-analysis-your-librarys-strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-and-threats.