1 day ($100 per attendee with a minimum of $500)
This is a detailed presentation of the “Managing Change Methodology” in a presentational format. The emphasis is on a proven, practical approach to a new way of doing business, a new way of designing information services and a new way of interacting with users. This is not a theoretical overview, but a pragmatic approach that teaches staff:
• How to add value to information services,
• How users need value added and why,
• Use of a cost/value model to compare service options and assign resources,
• Need for a participatory layer that allows users to add value,
• Purposes and processes for gathering data vital to creating and managing change, change that results in newly relevant and valuable information services.
The presentation provides a checklist of things that must be considered when undertaking significant change. Attendees will leave with a clear idea of what can be accomplished and how. They will also gain an understanding of “client-centered” vs. “organization-centered” planning, implementation and service design.
The following is an example of the methodology applied.
I developed this approach over thirty years of serving as Dean or Director at the University of Alabama, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Case Western Reserve University -- in each instance challenged by university administrators to lead staff members through various changes but almost always in a context of lean budgets, emerging technologies and faculty/student/staff expectations that were almost always at odds with one another.
There turned out to be a select number of key dynamics that come together to create an environment conducive to consensus and change and they are at the heart of our tools and services:
1. Library and IT staff members participate by going out into the campus community to talk to faculty, students and staff member about how they do their intellectual work and what technologies they are employing. Results include:
-- Understanding and the ability to profile where members of the university community are with regard to technology adoption, innovation and innovation diffusion as well as where they intend to go
-- Relationship building among library and IT staff and their university constituents
-- Early involvement of participating library and IT staff members in understanding where changes can begin to occur from the perspective their users -- hence User-Framed
-- Different context for university administrators to consider faculty and student support particularly in regard to technology use and knowledge development — and then to campus knowledge and technology infrastructure.
2. Library and IT staff members review the results of their campus discussions and look for new and/or emerging patterns of teaching, learning and research. As the patterns emerge, library and IT staff members begin to develop potentially new or enhanced service models that would also reflect new library and IT infrastructure investments. An important part of the analysis is to identify where the Library and IT add value if they supported these model(s) -- hence Value-Added. We also provide a set of simple but sophisticated tools for strategically considering these new models and then settling on the models with the best fit to campus community behaviors related to the emerging patterns.
3. The models and implied infrastructure investments are taken back to faculty, students and staff members as well as to department chairs, Deans, Provost, Vice Presidents and President for awareness and discussion. The importance of the initial steps in 1 and 2 is that the discussions of what to do are grounded in the information seeking and use behaviors of students and faculty members -- User-Framed Value-Added. Pattern identification focuses on similarities rather than differences. Administrators are presented with a decision context in terms of understanding the benefits of new infrastructure investments. And, finally, the "methodology" application with its accompanying discussions and strategic analysis can very quickly result in an organization culture (with a shared vision) supportive of understanding and managing change.
