March 13, 2008 - evaluate performance, not people

Every other year, the Public Library Association has an annual conference. This year it will be held in Minneapolis, at the end of March.

It happens that several of our staff will be presenting at the conference this year, evidence that Douglas County Libraries is well-regarded across the nation.

One of the presentations is a partnership: Eloise May, the director of the Arapahoe Library District, and I, are teaming up with two Board members (Howard Rothman from her library, Mark Weston from ours) to talk about the topic of "evaluating the director." This presentation is directed mainly at the other citizen trustees of libraries around the country.

Eloise did a lot of the research, pulling in representative samples from various kinds of libraries: municipal, county, independent district. Then we've tried to make sense of the different approaches.

One of the clearest summaries we've found was written almost 20 years ago by Nancy Bolt, Colorado's former state librarian. She described three broad approaches to annually evaluating the chief administrator of a library:

1. Traits. Here the focus is on individual personality characteristics. For instance, the director is rated on punctuality, or communication style.

This might be helpful for a first time director. But after a board works through this once or twice, it quickly becomes obvious that most people don't adopt a whole new set of behavior traits over the course of a year.

Trait-based evaluation may help a board get to know the strengths and weaknesses of a new leader (and might help the new leader identify some skills that need work) -- but that doesn't necessarily determine how well the organization is doing.

2. Job description. Here the focus is on comparing director tasks to the job description as created by the governing body. Of course, it does make sense, from time to time, to make sure that directors are spending their time on the duties for which they are being paid, and that those duties are accurately described somewhere.

On the other hand, this approach doesn't usually capture strategic initiatives or planning goals. It's generic, by necessity over-broad. ("Prepares an annual budget." But to accomplish what?) A list of tasks is useful for lower level jobs, but tends not to work so well for administrative positions.

3. Organizational performance. Here the idea is that directors are not being judged as people, or by how well they fit the description of duties, but by how well the organization is doing according to its long range plan.

The Board (or other governing body for some libraries) sets the direction: we want to accomplish X by some date.

The director is then judged by whether or not X got done by that date, or can at least measure significant progress to that end.

To our surprise, a great many of the evaluation processes being used in the library world fall into the first two categories. It's the kind of approach that CAN lead either to irrelevancies, or to the status quo, as opposed to the accomplishment of clear business objectives.

To be fair, of course, a leader who has rapidly deteriorating behavior traits, or fails to perform some key part of the job description, needs to be confronted about that.

But the truth is, in both the public and private sectors, we get distracted by tasks and personality quirks. We lose sight of the fact that successful organizations actually set big goals, and work to achieve them.

And that should be the primary focus of leadership evaluation.

April 10, 2008 - power corrupts

"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat."
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987

I'm just going to come out and admit it. I, as director of the Douglas County Libraries, abuse my position.

I -- and let me be clear about this, I have NO intention of changing -- have let people know in our receiving department, our cataloging department, our circulation department, that I, Jamie LaRue, Library Director, get the comic books first.

That's right. Before anybody else. Before any tax payer in the county. I don't care WHO is waiting for them. I'm first in line.

I could try to pretty this up. When I was a kid, all kinds of other authorities tried to take my comic books away from me.

I remember, back in fourth grade, that I would try to hide them in my notebook, and my teacher (when I failed to respond to a question) would seize my comics from me. I never got them back.

My father, when I was away for a summer, literally burned (I figured out later) about $20,000 worth of comics (in 1972 dollars). I had the first 16 issues of Spiderman. The first Thor. The whole first several YEARS of the original X-men. I had the Carmen Infantino Flashes.

I remember the moment when I sat down with a price guide, and pointed out that my entire college education (and a big chunk of his second house mortgage) could have been entirely funded from just one of the grocery bags full of comics my dad consigned to ash one day. He was stunned. For all the good it did me.

Adults -- cruel, insensitive, foolish adults -- have repeatedly stolen or destroyed priceless treasures, key volumes in my personal library, at MANY moments of my young life.

Not that I'm bitter.

But I'm not going to go there. Finally, and I realize that a lot of people don't get this at all, I'm not a child any more. Yes, I've been victimized. But I am a victim no more. There comes a time when you have to reach deep inside yourself and find your inner adult.

But here's the thing: My inner adult likes comic books.

So, as director, I directed the investment of library funds in the collection of whole bunches of them.

I will say that we've ruined the comics for investment purposes. We slap barcodes, markings, covers, etc. on them to help them stand up to repeated use. That absolutely devalues them for collecting purposes.

But that's not the point. I firmly believe that some of the best writing in the world today -- and some of the finest artwork -- still takes place in the world of comic books.

As I have noted to several concerned parents, when I was just 5 years old, I was the only kid on my block who could spell "invulnerable." That's worth something.

I'll also point out that comics speak to young adults at precisely the moment that they lose interest in libraries. Comics surprise and re-engage them, reconnecting them to a world that combines word and image in a way that is far more demanding, far more literate, than TV or film.

I hasten to assure you that I'm not absolutely corrupt. I work hard to ensure that I add just one day to the distribution of our comics. There are times when I come home with 20 of the latest issues, and, sparing NO personal effort, work through every single one of them in a single night.

My wife has learned that, on those nights, I really can't be called upon to do anything else.

But there it is. I have been given great power, great authority. And I have taken total advantage of it to read the library's comic books first.

As Thor, the Norse God of Thunder (as interpreted by Stan Lee), might put it, "So mote it be."

March 6, 2008 - real men aim for maximum gadgetude

I believe I know what most red-blooded American men want. It's not what you think.

And it isn't easy. There are many obstacles to be overcome to achieve the ultimate aim of maximum gadgetude.

First came my need for a computer. My first PC (a Kaypro II) was called "portable," in exactly the same way a sewing machine is portable. It folded up to a compact package weighing about 30 pounds.

I was, I now realize, obsessive. I didn't just go in and buy one. I researched countless magazines. I prowled computer stores. And because, back then, I was just starting out in life, I had to take out my first loan. For a gadget.

The next gadget that obsessed me was years later. I bought the second model of the Palm Pilot, which ran on two little batteries. It took me six weeks of use to cram my life into its modest dimensions.

Since then, I've upgraded twice. It's painful, when you realize that you have the oldest model in the meeting. The displays, the speed, the apps, are so much better these days. And that's bound to make you more productive, right?

A PocketPC? Please, I have my standards.

As time went on, I felt new stirrings. First, it was a laptop, although I persuaded myself that it was for my wife. Oh, the beauty of a MacBook!

When I tired of carrying a laptop around in my travels, I hit on a new strategy: an Internet Tablet. I settled on the Linux-based Nokia N800. And it was almost perfect, needing only an Igo Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard to complete me as a man. For a while.

(Or, of course, there's the N810.)

I watched in amusement and sympathy as the drive for maximum gadgetude took root in my son, Max. He needed an iPod Touch. He needed it so bad. His latent research skills (he is the child of two librarians, after all) wakened: he read every review, in paper and online. He was on a first name basis with the good people at the Apple Store, where he made biweekly pilgrimages.

Finally, Christmas!

Then, there was wii -- what passes for physical exercise these days, albeit in a virtual universe.

Just lately, my wife ran across an ad for something so brilliant I wish I'd thought of it first. It's called a MusicPad Pro. For just $899, you can have an electronic book capable of storing, displaying, and allowing notations on, all your sheet music. Pop it up on the piano or music stand, tap a button to turn the page. One device, tens of thousands of works.

I gotta have one. I gotta.

The Sony eBook: I felt pretty cool sitting there on the plane with 8 novels packed into a slim and elegant case. Until the flight attendant told me I had to turn off my book for landing.

So I was forced to pull out a science fiction magazine, picked up from one of our library booksales for pennies. And I thought, as I flipped through it, handled it, sniffed it, read it comfortably, then left it behind in my hotel room later for the next person... you know, this print stuff?

It might catch on.

February 28, 2008 - reading is paying attention

Hank Long, a buddy of mine who happens to be the director of the Englewood Public Library, sent me a provocative trio of articles about reading.

The articles included, "The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading," by Howard Gardner; "Not Reading An Iota in America," by Randy Salzman; and "The Dumbing Of America: Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces," by Susan Jacoby. All appeared in the Washington Post on February 17, 2008 (and elsewhere).

Gardner notes that every time there's a big change in media, the leading lights of the day both celebrate the human gain, and mourn the human loss. Plato, for instance, arguably one of the masters of the trendy new art of writing, "feared that written language would undermine human memory capacities (much in the same way that we now worry about similar side effects of 'Googling')."

Theologians also worried about literacy. Back in the 15th century, people started reading the Bible themselves, instead of asking priests to interpret it. One of the consequences of literacy was the Protestant revolution.

On the other hand, libraries preserved the stories, both myth and history, that would otherwise have been lost. Literacy encoded learning.

Salzman, meanwhile, wrote about sitting in a juvenile court waiting room, a place without books, where the dispirited parents and children sat staring, vacant. As for himself, Salzman had brought, "Reading Lolita in Tehran." It was about Muslim women in Iran who read -- and by reading, faced being jailed, beaten or raped.

Salzman recalls "Charlottesville bookstore owner Kay Allison and her wonderful work in Virginia with 'Books Behind Bars,' a prison book-donation program. Allison says she gets about 20 letters every day from prisoners who write to her in awkward block letters, desperately seeking books. Every day. Using their literal 'down time,' they seek to recover reading and thinking and connecting to the world outside -- not unlike the women in 'Reading Lolita.'"

Finally, here's an arresting passage from Susan Jacoby:

"People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping 'I'm the decider' may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio 'fireside chat' so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president."

Here's the kicker: "According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it 'not at all important' to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it 'very important.'"

Jacoby's point is that Americans barely have any attention span left. She blames video.

She cites a Harvard study that "between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds."

I find myself more in agreement with Gardner. I don't think we're all getting dumber. I think we're still trying to wrap our neural networks around a host of inputs undreamnt of by our DNA.

We're smarter in some ways, not so smart in others.

But after pondering all this, it's hard not to agree with both Salzman and Jacoby: it can't hurt to pay more attention.

February 21, 2008 - ignorance is not a goal

After over half a century of life, study, intense social interaction, and careful thought, I have concluded ... that I don't know very much.

In my more optimistic moments, I think that might be good. Maybe I've finally UNlearned some things that were stopping me from seeing the world as it is.

In less optimistic moods, I think the truth is both simpler and scarier. The universe is a chaotic system. It CAN'T be understood.

But usually, I do think that learning is possible. I just don't think I'm a great example.

Take languages. I studied French for 3 years in high school. I got pretty good, I thought. I could read magazine articles and novels.

But I've mostly lost it (although my wife and I are talking about signing up for classes with the Alliance Francaise). When we went to Quebec City last year, I was nearly illiterate. I didn't like that part, although I DID like Quebec City.

My wife, I'm sure, will quickly surpass me. She took 5 years of French, and then she majored in Russian (which took her only 3 years). And when I met her, she was cataloging books and microfilms in 5 languages.

But that's ok. If you don't study things because other people are smarter than you, you never learn anything. There's always someone smarter.

Recently I got a call from a patron who accused me of working to make America a bilingual nation, by which he seemed to mean that the library has offered some Spanish language celebrations and classes over the years.

Let me make this perfectly clear: the library is overwhelmingly focused on the provision of American English materials and programs.

A tiny fraction of the over 150,000 items we added last year were in languages other than English (just 246 items in our juvenile area). Among our thousands of public programs are also a few that focus on other languages. But the vast majority are about getting preschoolers ready to learn to read ... English.

So we are not engaged in some deep conspiracy to displace English from our shelves or our culture.

On the other hand, here's the plain truth: when it comes to global competitiveness, Americans are doing a truly terrible job on the language front. The public library strikes me as a logical place to try to turn that around.

There's good news in our society. Our public schools have an exciting new Chinese language program. Might it be worthwhile to learn about the language spoken by more other native speakers than any on the planet? (Particularly if you might want to explore Asian business opportunities?)

A lot of folks in Colorado have business dealings, or take vacations, in Mexico or South America. They want to speak the local language there.

A tenet of my faith as a librarian is that reading about other people's lives -- other ages, other times, other cultures, other tongues -- is precisely how we grow as both individuals and as nations. The strongest nations don't live in isolation. They talk to each other.

Our language itself has become the world's most popular SECOND language worldwide exactly because of that: we steal other people's words. We have the only language on the globe that has, or needs, a thesaurus.

The way to make English strong is not by refusing to speak anything else. It's by enriching it with everything useful we can glean from everyone else, and using those assets in new ways.

Ignorance is our natural condition. But we don't have to settle for it.

February 14, 2008 - "Hey boss, I want YOUR job!"

My wife does something that's very smart. When she starts to feel sick, she takes an herbal concoction designed to boost her immune system. As a result, she rarely GETS sick. She just starts to, then gets better.

I have a different approach. It might be a function of my gender. I deny that I am getting sick, until eventually I'm so ill that I can't get out of bed.

That's usually when I finally condescend to drink the herbal concoction -- at which point, of course, it does me no good at all. It's too little, too late.

Lesson: It is easier to maintain health than to lose and regain it.

This is true for institutions, too. It is better to be alert to the equivalent of sniffles than to wait for the unmistakable symptoms of crisis.

I'll be honest. Last year, Douglas County Libraries had sniffles -- the foreseeable need for more space. The preventive medicine was, I thought, relatively painless -- a modest tax increase that would have kept up with growth, with a minimum of disruption. However, the campaign failed to summon enough supporters to the polls. Reality is what it is.

Now, I fear that the institution I serve will endure more decline, more sickness, and its recovery will be correspondingly more painful and expensive.

That depressed me. So to cheer myself up, I decided to invite our staff to schedule a series of private interviews with me. It was time to touch base with our people.

I asked everybody three questions. Why did they want to work here? What did they think we should be working on over the next couple of years?

Finally, I wanted to know what THEY wanted to be doing in 3 to 5 years.

And cheer me up it did. Working for the library are the smartest, most interesting people I've ever met.

We have former ministers, geologists, professional dancers, and teachers. We have people passionate about civic dialog, people eager to reach out to seniors, teens, and toddlers.

They are convinced that we can make our communities more interesting, more challenging, and richer in every respect.

And I believe them. Why not? They do it every day.

I was also delighted to discover a new generation of folks pursuing a career in librarianship.

They came to us, I hope you'll be as pleased to learn as I was, because we have a reputation for innovation.

We've earned it. Our staff has, and puts into practice, more good ideas in a week than some libraries come up with in a decade.

Some of our staff are pursuing traditional Master's programs in librarianship. Others are attending online programs. Some staff are receiving financial assistance from us for their schooling. Some aren't -- but should be.

All of them are eager to do something to improve the lives of the people in their communities. They want to be well paid,
by the way.

They believe that a library career shouldn't have to be a supplementary contribution to a family income, just because so many librarians are women. They are skilled professionals, brimming with entrepreneurial energy. They think their job merits a primary income.

They're right.

One young woman looked me in the eye and said she wanted MY job!

We both laughed, but I was very pleased.

I am now old enough to understand that few things can be guaranteed for the future. The only real, true pleasure of the administrative life is this: you get to see people grow.

I am thrilled to learn that there is a whole cohort of staff who care deeply about their work, believe in its importance and significance, and would be only too eager to shoulder me aside to get to the work sooner.

That's an attitude I completely approve of.

And it gives me hope. The last generation of voters denied the early illness of their library. The next generation might want to hang onto its health.

February 7, 2008 - Chris Gates and civic engagement

My fundamental idea of librarianship has changed a lot over the years. I began with a simple love of books. Books did and do make me happy.

When I became a director, I focused on trying to understand the remarkably complex background of library operations. (Any business is complex when you really dig into it.)

As the leader of any organization must, I eventually re-focused on the process of securing sufficient resources to accomplish our plans. That required me to take a look at the larger context of the library environment.

At first, I saw the community (everybody "out there") as tools to help the library do its job.

About a decade ago, I had an epiphany. I realized that I had it exactly backward. It is not the job of the community to help the library. It is the job of the library to help the community.

We do that in two ways. The first is through personal transactions -- our responses to individual questions.

But we are also a social asset, serving the larger community in a number of other ways. One way is as an anchor of downtowns, a destination whose traffic greatly benefits those around us.

Our community meeting spaces also provide an essential opportunity for people to find not just library resources, but each other. We provide something that is in all-too-short supply in our world: common and neutral ground, public space available to all, and staffed with good listeners and researchers to help inform our conversations.

I believe the future of public librarianship lies precisely in this sphere of community integration. Every community has issues, questions, projects. Libraries aren't the only assets that can be deployed to assist; but they are, or can be, powerful ones, especially when partnered with others.

There is a swing in societal movements that parallels my own. One generations focuses only on itself. Eventually, either that older generation, or a new generation altogether, comes along to say, "but what about the rest of us? What about the larger community in which we all live? What kind of environment are we making not just for ourselves, but for those who come after us?"

And that question is the beginning of what some call "civic engagement."

Civic engagement has many dimensions. One of them, in a presidential election year, is obvious. Question: Who will decide the nation's leadership? Answer: only those who vote. If you're not registered to vote, or if you're registered, but DON'T vote, then you abdicate that decision to the people who do vote. You surrender to others the ability to decide your own future. And you live with the consequences of those decisions.

But civic engagement means more than politics and voting. It means taking actions, together, that result in a community worth living in, in which many can and do thrive.

That engagement will involve, on occasion, some conflict. There are competing visions of the future, and sometimes they have to be argued out.

The point, however, is not conflict. It is, finally, about cooperation, about processes of analysis and action to effect useful change.

On February 20, 2008, from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., at the Castle View High School, the Partnership of Douglas County Governments is bringing in a provocative and exciting speaker, Chris Gates. There will be a little socializing from about 8 to 8:30 a.m. But Gates will start promptly at 8:30.

His address, a give-and-take conversation with the community, is free and open to the public. Many elected officials, and currently serving public board members, have already been invited. But Partnership members hope and believe that many other interested citizens will attend.

To ensure that everyone who wants to attend can be comfortably accommodated, please RSVP either by calling 303-660-7401 or emailing vhirschf@douglas.co.us.

Chris Gates is the first Executive Director of PACE, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement. For 11 years before that, he was President of the National Civic League, a national, non-profit organization with offices in Denver and Washington, D.C. In addition to membership on various national boards, Gates is the founder and Chair of the Colorado Institute for Leadership Training, a former board member of Leadership Denver, and a member of Denver’s City Club.

Gates has been doing a lot of investigation of civic engagement around America. His findings will challenge your understanding of what's worth giving your time to.

What kind of community do you want to live in? And what will it take to craft that community, together? Isn't it time that you joined the conversation?