Competency D

Introduction

As we saw in Competency B, information professionals have various environments they can practice in. With this diversity comes a broad range of roles within these environments. For example, the manager role can extend to varying focuses, including collections, data systems, facilities, personnel, user experience, and finances.

Planning, management, marketing, and advocacy skills enable any information professional to adapt to the ever-changing information environment and successfully answer the number one question they are constantly asked-“Why do we need you?”. In this competency, we will discuss planning, management, marketing, and advocacy from an information organization point of view.

Strategic Planning

To respond to the changes in the current environment, an organization thrives with a documented strategy for adapting and responding to the change. This strategic plan can be created whenever (having one is better than having not) and tends to look forward a few years (about 3-5).

The Benefits of Strategic Planning

There are various benefits associated with an information organization using its strategic plan to make decisions, including (Rosenblum, 2022):

• It also allows those working in that organization to focus on the core mission and vision, focusing on high-level outcomes vs. immediate results.

• The organization has a document outlining the core mission and vision.

• Everyone inside and outside the organization is on the same page, and there is consistency in the actions they take.

• Enables the information organization to highlight the needs of its customers, the essential activities and programs and translate them into goals and objectives

• Having this type of documentation helps the library management focus on high-level outcomes vs. immediate results.

• Enables management to justify budgetary decisions to stakeholders.

Creating a Strategic Plan- The First Steps to Take

There are several phases when it comes to developing a strategic plan. Before ironing out specifics into a mission statement, vision statement and list of organizational values, a review of the organization must be completed to identify a baseline. Assessments to determine this baseline include (Fuller, n.d.):

• Outlining the organization’s structure (who is involved internally and externally)

• An inventory of the current programs and services and how they are being funded

• An assessment of how well the organization is meeting the needs of its community with the identified programs and services

• Environmental scans that show short and long-term trends that could impact the organization

• A SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis

Management

When we think about management, we often think about managers of people. However, management in information services pertains to the foundations of the information organization, including the people who work there, budgets and funding, physical and digital collections, and how the organization responds to change (Moran, 2018).

People

Recruiting and maintaining a group of talented, dedicated, knowledgeable and patron-focused individuals contributes to the organization’s overall success. All that being said, even the best employees are still human, so there are times when conflicts within the organization’s personnel. This is where the Human Resources manager would come in and use effective HR policies and strategies to create a healthy workplace culture.

An information services professional who manages all things Human Resources would be in charge of the following (Mackenzie-Ruppel et al., 2022):

• Recruiting and hiring a diverse pool of individuals

• Legal issues related to employment

• Onboarding and continuous staff training

• Motivating employees as well as administering performance reviews

• Disciplinary actions and separating an employee from the organization when the need arises

These managers must have developed knowledge and understanding of standard human resource practices and policies. This knowledge, paired with a sense of how the information service organization functions, ensures that they can attract and recruit candidates that are a good fit for the organization and will contribute positively to work.

Budgets & Funding

While we wish this weren’t the case, money is also another fundamental part of an information organization. For an information professional completing formal training in accounting and finance is optional; they must understand the organization’s finances and funding and create and manage a budget. It is also essential to know how to find and acquire funds and allocate them to align with the goals outlined in the organization’s strategic plan (Jones, 2022). The elements of budgeting are the same, but the process may vary from organization to organization. Gaining budgeting skills is usually a gradual process where employees gain experience as they move through the organization’s ranks.

Change Management

There are several essential skills that managers need when dealing with change, including (Barefoot, 2022):

• Vision development and implementation

• Analyze the type of change (incremental or discontinuous) and how the organization should respond (anticipatory or reactively)

• Engage and support people through the change

• The ability to assess their leadership skills

Change leaders are usually the first to develop strategies to deal with change; they are pillars of strength when implementing these strategies and are comfortable taking risks. A hot topic in change management is the creative thinking model, Design Thinking, created by IDEO (a design firm). The Design Thinking model emphasizes a multidisciplinary, user-centric approach to problem-solving and aims to help direct the organization through the change implementation process (Bell, 2008).

Marketing

According to Oxford English Dictionary, marketing is the activity or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. However, for information organizations, marketing is often mistaken as the need to promote the organization’s resources. In reality, the promotion of so much more essential is to provide their stakeholders with evidence of their added value to the community (Romaniuk, 2018).

Marketing & Communication Plans

Marketing and communication operations are most effective when there is a clear plan everyone in the organization can follow. Marketing and communication plans are incorporated into an organization’s strategic plan and usually address the goals, objectives, and strategies set out in the strategic plan.

The marketing and communication plans should include the following key elements (Alman, 2022):

• Marketing has developed into a user-centric process, so an environmental scan is essential to get started. This research will generate descriptions of the target populations, including their wants and needs.

• The formats that will be used (i.e. social media outlets that will be used, promotional materials that will be used)

• Branding notes (the look and feel of the organization, which can include the logo, colour scheme, and tone of messages)

• Documents such as a media kit, annual reports

• Evaluation and assessment metrics (to determine if the plan is successful)

Advocacy

Understanding how the different levels of politics work in their community and how their decisions impact the organizations they work for is a huge asset for an information professional. This understanding and the skills to cultivate and empower super supporters can ensure these organizations can show their relevance within the community. It also ensures they receive the funds they need to continue working.

Highlights from the 2018 Awareness to Funding Report

In 2018, the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) published a follow-up to their report, Awareness to Funding; while there is still support for libraries, that support has steadily declined over the last ten years. This report was significant because it highlighted several long-held beliefs about library support that have dampened library advocacy efforts (From Awareness to Funding Summary Report, 2018). For example, they have found that library support is not related to:

• Library use

• Political party affiliation

• Positive feelings about the library

The report found something that could alter how library professionals approach advocacy in the future. It illustrated that the voters generally did not see the library the way library staff saw it, such as a place for children’s literacy and engagement, a place to borrow books or access tech ology, or a place where you could work or study. The research showed that the more trust and personal communication an individual had with library staff, the more motivated they were to take action on behalf of the local library (From Awareness to Funding Summary Report, 2018).