WEEK 5 - PRE-WORK ON DEALING WITH STRATEGIC PLANNING
This is sort of "ass-backwards" as my mom would say (and she's 78 so I guess it's ok!) Having met Rebecca, I appreciate the opportunity to gain insight where, admittedly, I am quite blind.

I'll admit it is difficult, and has been, for me to wrap my brain around her parting words: "Take the mayor to lunch." as she was also adamant that said lunch could not include arsenic. I'll admit that my initial experiences with City Hall have not been the best, much of it soured before my arrival. 

And, alas, I know this will not be resolved like a Hollywood movie where the new comer comes into town, challenges the tight knitted  status quo (usually involving a bible thumping minister, a sour group of parents shouting "Think of the children" and the marginalized spinster/hooker/weird old lady with a heart of gold) and it all comes out swimmingly at the end in a gushy, uplifting soundtrack featuring the latest singer du jour belting out the theme which no matter how often you change the radio dial you just can't avoid hearing.

Upon returning from the retreat, I was greeted with a whack load of the same old issues from blinkered individuals. To be honest, I felt more like the battered woman from the 50s being told to return to her husband because he is, after all, the husband and head of the household. Things like having two small mentions of the Library in the City's recently release cultural plan ("Yeah, I do it all as the little missus don't understand these sort of things..."), being told by a school board that they'll consider my Board's revisions of a proposed contract for a service location after they talk to the City about it ("Hello, little lady, let me talk to the man of the house..."), these had me chomping at the bit.

So, Rebecca, what I would like:
1- The knowledge of planning - yes, I know. "What?????!!!!!" I'll admit my planning skills with regards to this are poor. I thought I understood planning but then came the retreat and it was "Holy crap! I'm like that guy who leaped on his horse and rode off in all directions." The literature provided is a start and I know that you have some great exercises planned so this is doable. And don't misunderstand me when I state that I need examples, exercises and sample plans returned with big red comments. Most struggle to think outside of the box: I struggle to get inside the box. Most don't see the forest for the trees: I don't see the forest for the leaves. Kids with ADD would tell me to focus. Heck, you've met me, possibly seen some of my blog postings.  I'm more "all over" than mucus from a three year old's sneeze.

2- The confidence to solve - This will come with the knowledge but it needs some nurturing. I an extremely creative. I am remarkably intelligent. And when given knowledge I can spin stuff that would make Rumpelstiltskin's look like tinfoil. But I need to grow into it. I need to be able to play, break things without an admonishing parent going "If you can't take better care of your stuff..." So, the dialogue I will have with you about my exercises will be important.

3- The ability to communicate - This is riffing on something I got out of an OLA conference: it's all about them. I need to become Machiavellian in making the community groups and the City understand that I am trying to align myself with them and not come across as an overzealous missionary talking to natives. There are many critical things that this Library needs in order to survive but I have found that to present these as a laundry list of shortcomings, they are ignored because, pffff! it's "just" the Library. I need to be able to voice our growth so that others buy in.

WEEK 5 (WELL, ACTUALLY MORE LIKE, WELL... LET'S NOT GET INTO THAT)

It has taken a long while. I read the material, Spruce Goose and all, and it wasn’t jelling.  I went to the first retreat and it jelled but more like aspic, with little bits in it that no one quite knows what they are and avoids it (Everyone: a rousing chorus of “Lime Jello, Marshmallow, Cottage Cheese Surprise”!)

It was great stuff, I was taking it in, and yet it was like hiking through the Rockies with Vaseline on my lenses.  And through it all, I kept wondering: what’s wrong with me?  I’m not stupid.  I should get this.  Why is this so foreign?

I benefited from some wonderful wisdom, hard to beat Anne Marie and Rebecca as sources on this stuff, met some great folks from across Ontario, some with bad situations, i.e., in similar boats as I, though with less leakage from my point of view.  So why is this so hard?  They seem to be getting it.

Rereading reinforced the fact that I’ve really taken a huge career bite when I accepted to become a library director even if it is a small, more rural than urban library.  It was a joke, a stupid joke that helped crack the wall. And I can’t even remember the context except that it was in a very forgettable movie: “Howard Hughes, isn’t he the one that never got out of his pajamas?” “No, that was Hugh Heffner.”

My tired brain popped: it’s the damn Spruce Goose analogy!  I’ve actually visited the damn thing, around 1990.  Star Trek is made up!  If they need it to fire matzo balls at some alien life force, they just have to write it in and it’s done.  The ships community and the Federation: all chirpier than Disney forest critters being sung to by an abandoned princess.  What community and City administration is ever that Kumbayah for any length of time? Even Bones’ curmodgeony made a tantruming three year old look like Attila the Hun.

And when I read: “..grab your Trekkie shirt [and I’m sure Rebecca and Jim have both received many admonitions about how it’s “Trekker” and never “Trekkie” by now.  I had it only once but, man, what a delivery and a set of lungs!], I saw myself in the red shirt of the original Kirk and Spock version.  And for those of you who don’t appreciate the significance of the colour, don’t Google it.  Watch Galaxy Quest, a brilliant send-up of Star Trek, including its fan base.

I’m actually living the Spruce Goose nightmare!  Hughes was a brilliant engineer.  When the Goose flew, it was a mere trial but the concept was brilliant and totally doable.  It could fly.  It could carry a large payload: the thing is cavernous, great for belting out an aria or two. I know, much to the surprise of some other tourists who had never heard Verdi’s great baritone aria from Ballo in Maschera - they do now!  But Hughes was against a huge force.  And the Spruce Goose analogy rang truer to me than the Trekker dream.

His plane was made of wood, easy to build cheaply and using renewable material.  Major airplane manufacturers and allied supply companies knew the threat to their fat military contracts.  Government and military officials are only human, offer them pots of cash and they can scotch even the greatest idea for a fee.  Anyone drive a Tucker these days?   And look into Dole and its Nicaragua banana plantations in the 50s.  Don’t believe these companies have the power to crush those they wish to oppose?

There’s a lot I could ramble on about but my bottom line is this: I am up against some long standing cultural issues and some deep imbedded “business as usual” practices, none of which are healthy for my Library nor for my community. I appreciate this now. So, time to cook the goose.

WEEK 4 OF APLL FUNDAMENTALS - OK, NOW I KNOW I'M A TAD BEHIND...

Got back from my training in Kempenfelt, a beautiful setting, met some great people, had a blast and got back to collide with reality. I know there's that great adage: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." and someone at the training mentioned something about failing to distinguish between what's important and what's urgent (must get more on what that means...) 

Tried valiantly to hold the faith but let's just say the end of the digestive process repeatedly kept hitting the ventilation system. Or, in leadership parlance, challenging growth opportunity. Timely, yes, but did it have to happen all at once? Sheesh!

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to assess myself using the handy-dandy tool. I also took the opportunity during a staff training day in November to have the staff assess me. Yes, I hear you: "Are you nuts?" 

But:
(a) I don't have a very large staff: you could put us in the meeting room in Kempenfelt, swing a long tailed cat (ok, stuffed toy cat for you cat lovers) and still not hit anyone: 5 branches and I have 10 staff members, only 2 who are full time. And this to serve a population of 23,000+. Sucks, but that is my reality. Challenge, ha! I speet at eet!
(b) We've been through a hell of a lot since I've arrived two years ago. I trust them. They have proven to be intelligent, resilient, open and caring.
(c) If I can't trust them with being honest about this exercise - I did explain why I was asking this - how can they trust me when I evaluate them? Just because I'm the Director? Check with Louis XVI and Nicholas II about that approach.

What came out was enlightening, frustrating, upsetting, rewarding, and, ok, there's that word again, challenging. Some things I thought I did well were average to them and some things I thought I did not as well as I would like, they felt I was doing a good job. Oh, there were a number of things we agreed upon when I put my assessment besides theirs. But some surprised me, some pleased me, some winded me. And you know, I enjoyed it.

I get so wrapped up in all the politics and the place is in such rough shape that stopping and having a look at myself and asking am I truly leading or am I only reacting is timely? This last one concept is critical to me as I feel I have a talent to assess situations and generate approaches and solutions. And it's shaking me that I am so focused on fixing what I see as wrong based on what I've learned as a librarian over the years that I am not being a good leader for this community. 

The gift I recently received was meeting so many people from different systems over a couple of days. Yes, many much better off yet dealing with critical issues, others closer to my situation and also facing challenges that I recognize as close to home. All God's chillin' got troubles what is so wrong with putting the brakes on and looking at what I've got to work with rather than what it should be.

My Leadership Strengths
- I inspire and motivate.
- I help people see how and where they fit in.
- I speak well and can sell my vision
- I assess, analyze, troubleshoot, resolve, find a way through a problem.
- I research, gather information, ask for help, seek counsel
- I support and encourage others to grow.
- I open to new ideas.
- I am forward thinking
- I involve people into the process.
- I am service oriented and challenge the status quo when I feel it should be changed.

Strengths Needing Development
- I am so overtaken with the day to day since arriving that I've not forged enough community involvement: I need to get out and meet other community leaders.
- I inherited a sour relationship with City Hall and it hasn't improved. Much of it has to do with education, i.e., that we are not a city department nor just a book depository but a partner in the well-being of this community. This will be a difficult growth.
- I lose myself in the perceived needs of the Library. I am too obsessed with getting to where this place should be. This is a such a great community and I value my staff so that it galls me that this Library is in such a state. But piling on hours and hours of overtime has taken its toll. I can't help anyone from the sidelines.

When I imagine myself as a confident, capable, effective leader, I see a Library valued by the community (and therefore by City Hall), an enabler to linking community needs with services, the go-to place, a partner in growth rather than perceived as a one-use tool.

WEEK 3 - CONTINUED - OH, THE PLACES WE COULD GO!

Well, it's been a bit of a merry-go-round for me these last couple of weeks, well, more like the merry-go-round at the end of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Could Farley Granger be any creepier? So, a whack load of interesting reading which I am to boil down to what vision I would have of my community and public library 10 years hence. This is more challenging than I think Anne Marie expected for me. 

Why? Because I've been through a library Master's programme with one professor shouting: "Books are doomed! Doomed! Why are you people even bothering with them! In 5 years, we'll all be using PCs to read what we need! It will all be on there!" That was in the 1983. I figure by now this same professor is in a white robe wearing a sandwich board, ringing a bell on the corner of Richmond and Dundas in London (Ontario) and still shouting the same. Go get 'em, Frank!

I also laughed hysterically when I watched Things to Come, the mid-30s film adaptation of H.G. Wells's novel, or basically any sci-fi flicks from the 50s. Even Star Wars is a hoot. Ah, Duck Dodgers in the 241/2 century!

No, no. The future takes so many twists as more and more, technological progress is telescoping the time to move from one platform to another. Look at the gaps between the 1940 station at Bletchey, England to the first IBM main frame business computer to the PC to the laptop to the portable phone to the tablet to the... clouds, I see clouds... or the Berliner phonograph to the 33 rpm to the, oops sidetrack to 8 track, to the cassette to the DVD to the mp3 player to the... clouds, I see clouds... So, many things could go either way. 

BUT, being optimistic, believing that by 2012 we haven't nuked each other into smithereens, wingnuts from any religious side haven't won out over any other, the archeologists have discovered that a set of hieroglyphs on the Mayan calendar actually reads as: "Need a refill for this calendar? Contact Xiochitottl today!" and the earth's poles haven't flipped, amongst oh, so many other delights, I was able to come up with something I was happy with (other than the fact that, oh, please God, I'll be retired!) for my community.

10 YEAR VISION

For the Community:

The community has lost its original francophone bias through increased relocation of commuters, predominantly anglophone. I gave it 5 years at my job interview but it's already happening: anglophone service reps in stores, gas stations who can't speak a word of French. And the Catholic school board has lost its grip on much of the community, freeing it up to expand in a more multicultural way. Heck, we might all simply be part of the mega-city OttaKings. 

The rate of unemployment is pretty much the same. There are far more nasty people but then again there are far more nicer people so crime rate is fairly the same except crimes are uglier because weapons as well have improved which is a boon for news sights clamouring for eyes to boost their statistics and bragging rights. 

writng hs evlvd cuz chat qukr, mre pplar bt f10 mzred, cozn cnfusn. Unfortunately, due to massive use of social media, predominantly text based, younger people have lost the ability to recognize or create many facial and body cues, seeing older people who actually smile and touch as being creepy because they do so rather than flash an emoticon or send a poke. Wait, that's happening now!

I could go on as I've been through the 70s (who could see that polyester nightmare coming!) and the selfish 80s (brought to you by the very flower children of the 1960s!) and the downsizing 90s not to mention 2001 living in a border town with the U.S.

So, mine is not so much a filmstrip, more a film festival with some stuff ranging from Disney-esque to Peckinpaw-Tarantino love child. And it's all just that, what a wise monk once replied when people asked him for his response to a horrible event: "We will see."

For the Library:

Print material is still abundant. Electronic access has expanded as it is practical and cheap.  But like fast food restaurants, people know it for what it is.

The Library exists as a community hub. City council understands that it is the distribution centre for information and has relocated many of its services as have the federal and provincial governments. But you don't want to know how bad it had to get before the bureaucrats finally admitted that, for information distribution, libraries do it best.

The Library is space, a physical space to allow the community a common place to share and be and an electronic space (think educational commons gone municipal meets community cloud) where as a portal, information is accessed and deposited.

Staff is occupied matching people to services and matching people to other people (reading clubs, teens teaching seniors / seniors teaching teens), observing, documenting and analyzing community needs to inform the various governments of rising trends and needs in that community (as oppose to whacked out attempts at the governments to bring in services that are "cool" but not currently needed or wanted or helpful). 

Staff coordinates and facilitates the venues for people to physically meet (storytimes, literacy, tutoring, group events) and the access to collected and pooled knowledge (indexing information stored in the community cloud and databases for better access). Yes, there are bibliometric tools, specialized software to crunch through the massive amounts of data but staff is still needed to, borrowing an old term from my grad studies, massage the data to maintain its usability.

Then again, by 2022, we could all be slaves to a more technologically advanced civilization from somewhere in the universe who came to us in peace and discovery. For further insights into this vision, see the history of Africa, Latin America, India, the Middle East, most of southern Asia...

WEEK 3 - NOTHING LIKE A BUG TO BRING YOU TO YOUR KNEES...

That and two board meetings in less than a week because the &*^$# board members, especially the City counselors don't show up! We'll schmooze more in Barrie... which by the way, how will this come about? I still haven't received anything through SOLS and today was a delivery day.

Anyhow, still a bit under the weather but plowing through my readings and catching up. Still fighting the "WHAT SORT OF BLOODY STATEMENT IS THAT????!!!" reflex, especially with the Orpheus, which I do admire as musicians, some brilliant recordings.  But being a music grad (alas, piano and musicology but still...) and having friends who perform in various orchestras or freelance, I was sputtering by the end of the article at some of the broad, sweeping statements. Let's just say, I was glad to get through that one!

See, feeling better already! Trust me, I'll catch up as I'm taking some time off next week. So, the brilliant insights are coming, only a tad behind those of my colleagues.  So, hang in there, guys... I'm a comin'!

WEEK 2 - MENTOR / TORMENTOR

I am always amazed how my life shuffles to align things about for me. Last week, I stumbled across two articles on mentoring (or "life coaching") while attending to things completely unrelated to this course work. One in fact was while waiting for a haircut. Being the infomaniac that I am, I quickly buried myself in the article until the stylist stood in front of me and "Ahem-ed" me to attention, tired of calling out my name. Synchronicity - got to love it.

My mentor is someone who sees "me", to quote Oliver Cromwell, "warts and all". My mentor is not fooled by any smoke and mirrors I can and will likely try to use to curry favour nor fooled by their own concepts and prejudices as to what I should be.

My mentor is learned and wise. Learned in a variety of ways to get me from A to B and wise in applying these methods to my strengths and weaknesses, even with a swift kick in the backside to get me to C if need be.

My mentor is in sync with me. I know I have a lot of energy: it has to flow out and it has to return. I know my mentor should have a lot as well, which will flow to me, through me and return. Any resistance to the other's current will weaken us both.

My mentor respects me and wants the best for me for my sake alone. My mentor is not my friend, nor my "buddy" nor anything else but my mentor. Nor is my mentor focused on Henry Higginsing me into a show piece. My mentor is there for me. Any friendship that could evolve after the dust settles on our work together for this course is gravy, and lucky me.

My mentor will be someone who will mold me and, though eventually possibly long gone, be part of me for the rest of my life just as many in my past have touched me and are still at a thought's reach though I remain myself. 

My mentor and I will laugh, argue, debate, share, trust each other and both, in our own way, grow.

STILL IN WEEK 1 - LEARNING TO LEAD

Going through leadership coursework, shackles went up and I could sympathize with Sydnie at this point as far as group work is involved. My reaction was, great, yet another albatross opportunity. Past experience, from grade school through to, well, fairly recently, has tarred my view on group work. I can't recall how often during my school years, the teacher, usually well intended having just read the latest student motivational tract but not quite grasping all the ramifications, chirped at us to form project groups or, worse, assigned us to groups.

I inevitably would have a group comprised of one well-intended but with an excuse for absolutely everything that they didn't get done (which is everything they agreed to do) or one "why bother, I'm going to fail anyway..." or one with delusions of George Patton going into battle or, la crème de la crème, the "I know this is off topic..." In other words, an albatross.

I have had positive group experiences, especially when ground rules are set. And I appreciate the great contribution a good moderator can bring. It's the difference between witnessing an invigorating, creative afternoon and living through the last half of The Lord of the Flies.

The assigned reading was encouraging. I tend to be hypercritical at times of some of these, especially when I feel that [translating an old French Canadian expression] they're farting higher than the hole. I flinched when I read "...after all everyone knows what a dumb question is..." Ah, no, what may be dumb to you could be critical to me. I know what an annoying question is and a whole lot of other types of questions are, but for dumb, ehhhhhhh, that can be hard to define. But, Mr. Force, don't let me stop you from telling me several different ways what a dumb question is after you've just told me that everyone knows what a dumb question is.

Some other eye-rollers in other documents. Dialogue: please, a dialogue involves two people sharing, hopefully mutually, ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc. If only one person is speaking, it's a monologue or a lecture and definitely not a "partial dialogue". How many women are partially pregnant? If you are having the dialogue with the other person and yet it is happening in your head, that's the sound of one hand clapping. See, so easy for me to go  "AAAAAArgh!" Sigh, I know it, I know it! I realize I must work on this because there was some good information to be gleaned from these texts.

I appreciated Brian Wilson's article as it is a style I use with my staff. But I will not do the "kiss-of-death" survey. I've experienced such surveys, including the "lets put all your concerns on flipcharts and each group will have minutes to present and we prohhhhhhmis to work on these" at staff meetings and several other re-connectors. These were executed with the sincerity of waxed fruit then ignored. No one thought staff moral could get any lower until we were handed shovels and told to dig.

Overall, some good meat to chew on. Plus a reminder to myself to stay open. Shoot the messenger but at least first listen to the whole message.