ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

The ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute: A five-year old spreads its wings

by Ed Garten

I hope that with the knowledge I gained at the institute, I will become proficient at taming annoying loops of communication that foil change to fidfilling circles that foster satitfaction and create results and movement on to more change.

I plan to look at my organizational challenges with new eyes and new insight.

The participants, themselves, helped me understand “the vision thing ” as I was always self-conscious about trying to make a vision something grand; but sometimes doing a simple thing well is the grandest vision.

These were a few of many comments solicited from institute participants six weeks after the fifth ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute. Readers who have been around most five-year olds will surely know that time of life as playful, delightful, and a time of inordinate curiosity. The 2003 institute was definitely a five-year-old in which to take delight!

Having financially supported each member of my library leadership team’s engagement with earlier institutes, I recall each of them returning to work with nothing but praise for this intensive learning opportunity and more than ready to put into practice many new insights. But, then, several suggested to me in a none too subtle way, “Hey, now it’s your turn.” Already seeing the light at the end of my own administrative career, I had mistakenly assumed that old dogs couldn’t learn new tricks. Was I surprised; now my entire leadership team has a common frame of reference as we approach both service delivery and human resource problems.

The fifth institute was intensive, yet sheer fun. As one participant put it: “I learned that if Harvard professors can present complex concepts in ways that are so humorous I am still laughing (six weeks later), I can cultivate adding joy to the library experience for the people [who] work here and for those who use our resources and services. I hope to make a lasting contribution toward my library’s cultural transformation to a joyous organization.”

As in prior years, the institute followed a now well-established curriculum with participants having the opportunity to focus on a pre-institute reading of Bolman and Deal’s Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership? Under the direction of Joan Gallos, we explored the four conceptual frames useful for analyzing leadership strategies: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. Using the book that he coauthored with Lisa Lahey, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work,³ Bob Kegan led sessions that challenged us to explore how the transformation of the workplace language we employ can become an efficacious vehicle for stimulating change within our organizations.

The primaiy means of presenting often complex higher education issues was through the classic Harvard case method. Participants read, reflect upon, and address a set of challenging questions, within the context of a real life case (with the names changed to protect the innocent, or guilty!). Most of the assigned cases were not library situations, rather they were larger organization or systemwide issues. As one participant put it, “Given the level of management expertise represented by the participants themselves, added to the fact that most of these individuals have long been immersed in the literature on organizational change in general and library management in particular, it did not take long for me to recognize that my expectations were more than met by all of the instructors, and that each of them were drawing on his or her own rich body of research.”

Now, not all hands up at once!

Some of those who have reported on earlier institutes in these pages have focused on the high quality of faculty leadership. As with most of the prior Institutes, faculty included James Honan, Robert Kegan, Maureen Sullivan, Joan Gallos, and Joe Zolner.

Let me not lower respect for that leadership— it was simply exceptional; however, it is equally noteworthy to suggest that, given the level of collective experience among participants, in tandem with the various opportunities for small group interaction, peer-to-peer learning was guaranteed to be nothing less than infectious. Indeed, the institute planners facilitated future interaction by setting up a post-experience electronic list as a means to cany forward conversations that emerged during the program.

Given the likely number of “Type A” personalities in the room, there were few wallflowers in this bunch; indeed, at every opportunity for response to questions posed by faculty, typically dozens of hands would go up, figuratively crying out: “Pick me, pick me!” Instructors had an almost uncanny way of solidifying a sense of fairness of involvement among participants, drawing forth a rich tapestry of experience and insight, as well as some measure of what could only be called administrative angst. The knowing laughter of recognition of experiences shared, as well as the recognition of the often difficult human issues with which deans and directors are faced, threaded its way through each of the interactive sessions. Those hands that readily rose to offer insight, perspective, and powerful example came from 32 states, two Canadian provinces, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and Australia. The energy in the room was palatable and contagious. That energy was enhanced by a horseshoe-shaped and tiered, hightech learning environment, one that allowed even 97 participants to enjoy a sense of intimacy and interaction. Nearly a hundred mid-career and senior administrators became a community of learners and problem solvers early on the first day. Even for a bunch of gregarious library leaders, it was simply amazing.

Learn, reflect, and apply

In the wake of a week of focused readings, guided discussions, and the intentional interaction with peer colleagues, the institute ended with an evaluation of the experience.

Having spoken with many participants who had attended one of the four earlier Institutes, it is clear that in the fifth year the overall program quality and pedagogical dynamic not only had been sustained, earlier years, in fact, had built on one another, enriching the latest iteration of this rewarding professional opportunity. As with earfier institutes, the 2003 class spoke of valuing the fluid nature of the experience; the balance between small and large group activities; the opportunity to be center stage with a group of gifted instructors; and the often candid sharing and palatable sense of collegiality evidenced among the seven or eight individuals who gathered early each morning in the various small reflection groups. Perhaps the only minor criticism anyone had of the program was the meager time given over to coffee breaks. A sip of coffee, perhaps a quick phone call or e-mail check and we were hustled back into our high-tech fishbowl of learning.

As planning for the next institute (August 8-13, 2004) commences, it is already certain that future participants will leave that experience, as did the 2003 class, with a profound sense of the immense changes shaping both our profession and higher education. As leaders we must make increasingly compelling cases for change long before the need to do so becomes desperately obvious. I call this strategic resilience.

Within our information organizations much of the response to this need for organizational resilience, sadly, has been scripted: strands of nostalgia for what is (and what was), elements of denial regarding deep secular trends in our competitive environment, and an arresting arrogance rooted in the powerfùl political constituencies of legacy programs. Today, organizational renewal (indeed transformation) must be a natural consequence of an organization’s innate resilience in the face of rampant challenge.

Many of our cuiTent models of both change and leadership focus on working to get better as opposed to working to get different. I would argue that we must be about the latter if we are to hope to confront incipient trends and embrace emergent opportunities for our students and faculty. Fundamentally, the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute is about helping leaders think about their organizations by employing compelling new language and metaphor as a means of framing and energizing organizational transformation and gaining facility in the use of tested techniques and strategies, ultimately to be placed in our evolving managerial tool kits.

Notes

1. Lee B. Bolman and Terrance F. Deal, ReffamingOtganizatíons: Artistry, Choice, andLeadership. 2nded. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997).
2. Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, How the Way We talk Can Change the Way We Work. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001). ■