Program
At the Future of the Library Symposium program held at the 2018 American Librarian Association Midwinter Conference, change was the one theme that was consistently discussed across sessions. There’s no escaping the fact that rapid change, whether internal or external, is impacting libraries in every sector of the profession, directly or indirectly. For library leaders, that means more of their time is dedicated to thinking and acting in order to adapt staff to change. In a constant change environment, leaders need to do more than manage change, they need to create a change-ready culture. Attendees will learn why traditional change management models, such as Kotter's eight-step process, are less suitable for an environment in which change is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. After attending this session their change mantra will be "Change is not a discrete event to manage. Change is constant evolution for which I am ever ready."
In order to facilitate attendees mindset transition from change management to change readiness, this session will:
* briefly review past and current thinking, models and leadership challenges associated with change and managing it.;
* explore what it means to adopt and lead with a change ready mindset - one that addresses library change as a holistic process, a cycle of activities with which we stay engaged;
* conduct a personal change ready audit to better understand their own change mindset and assess how change ready they are and what they need to understand about change readiness;
* identify the characteristics of a change ready organizational culture and determine what needs to happen at their library to move to a change readiness culture.
Attendees can anticipate engaging in activities to advance their understanding of change management versus change readiness and how they can evolve into change ready leaders. In doing so, they avoid becoming a static organization that ultimately has changed forced upon it. It’s up to library leaders to embrace change readiness themselves and instill a culture of change readiness that alters the status quo of change resistance.
ALA Unit/Subunit: LLAMA
Meeting Type: Program
Cost: Included with full conference registration.
Open/Closed: Open
Catherine Soehner
Interim Executive Director, Eccles Health Sciences Library
Associate Dean for Research and User Services
University of Utah
Steven Bell
associate university librarian
Temple University