I love to read, always have — what a surprise right?  And I always thought I liked the actual books but now I know it is really the content I love — the ideas, the puzzles, the stuff that makes you think and imagine.  And I know this how?  I am in love with my Amazon Kindle.  I thought it would be great for taking a bunch of books away with me when I’m gone for several weeks or so.  Less weight since air travel is such a pain these days.  I wanted to try it out as I have always love to gadgets.  I was amazed last November when a plane I was on had half the people using ebook readers.

So I downloaded a bunch of books to take away with a month ago.  BTW, it is easy on the Kindle as it has wireless capabilities.   I loved the feel of the Kindle, the weight, the ease of use as soon as I started using it.  I could bump the font up so I don’t have to squint (yeah, I’m getting old!).  I could take it anywhere; even on the bright sunny beach it excelled.  The one thing I had not anticipated was that I could rest the reader on my knee, on the back of the seat in front of me on the plane, on a pillow and only flick the next page button — so almost hands free,  amazing.  The Kindle even passed the bathtub test ( I didn’t drop it) although I’m now trying to design a bathtub accessory for hands free usage!

After reading 3 ebooks, I read a trade paperback and couldn’t wait to get back to the Kindle.  So I now know it is definitely all about the content, not the format, for me.  There will be many less piles of books in my future, and many more ebooks in my Kindle.  Oh Kindle, My Kindle, I love you!’

I also think it’s interesting that Deloitte’s top predicition for TMT (Technology, Media, Telecommunications) in their Canadian predictions for 2010 is, “E-readers will see strong growth in 2010, but this will slow down the following year due to competition from other mobile devices like smart phones, netbooks and tablets. Deloitte anticipates e-readers will ultimately remain a niche device, while e-book sales skyrocket.”  Content rules, containers change and so do we!

It’s amazing how fast a year goes by and how much we cram into 365 days.  Hope everyone has a great holiday season and a terrific year in 2010!  At this time of year, I always look ahead to what’s to come, and 2010 looks like it’s shaping up to be exciting.  Here’s a peek –

Ontario Library Association SuperConference, Feb 24-27

Rebecca and I are facilitating a pre-conference workshop on Wed Feb 24 — Leadership Renewal: Conversations, Insights & Revitalization (P004) which includes segments with Cindy Ross Pedersen, Strategic Volunteer & Entrepreneur, Ken Haycock, Director, San Jose State University School of Libary & information Science & Senior Partner, Ken Haycock & Associates Inc. and Gordon Vala-Webb, PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada PLC.  This interactive workshop should provide lots of wonderful conversations and insights.  Rebecca is speaking about Resolving Conflict - Reaching Consensus (317) on Thurs Feb 25 and Service Lifecycle Management: Pruning Gives Other Services Room to Grow (1228) on Friday Feb 26.  We have also put together a session on Thurs Feb 25 called Digital Strategies: Practices & Services (1021) which features Aaron Schmidt, District of Columbia Public Library, Amanda Etches Johnson, McMaster University and Daniel Lee, Navigator Ltd.  We hope to see lots of our friends and colleagues in Toronto at SuperConference!

Computers in Libraries, DC, April 12-14

This vibrant conference is filled sessions on topics of interest to all those in the information business.  Check out the program and join us for stimulating discussions, lots of learning and networking, and of course, fun!

Special Libraries Association Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 12-16

Rebecca and I are again facilitating a full day pre-conference workshop on Sat, June 12th — Strategic Renewal: Learning from Executives featuring Darrell Gunter, Chief Marketing Officer, Collexis Holdings Inc. Kate Noerr, CEO, MuseGlobal Inc., Barbara Robinson, Executive Coach, and Cindy Ross Pedersen, Strategic Volunteer & Entrepreneur.  It should be an illuminating and revitalizing experience.  Hope you can join us.  Watch for more details coming soon.

The process of formulating their strategy is one of the most important, challenging and invigorating projects an organization ever undertakes. It is the organization’s opportunity to seriously reflect on the evolving environment surrounding it, and the impact it wants to make in that environment. The environment is full of contradictions, incredible opportunities, and daunting threats. But the organization that carefully considers those contradictions, energetically envisions the future it truly wants for itself, and courageously makes difficult decisions about how to realize that future is a strategically hardy organization, ready, willing and able to succeed today and tomorrow.

Being strategically hardy isn’t easy. It requires some real effort and exercise. I’ve honestly lost count of the number of organizations we’ve worked with on strategic formulation. But each one realized & fully engaged in a process that engaged as many people as possible, & that acknowledged - up front - that not everyone was going to be happy with the strategies selected, but that everyone would buy in to the process by which those strategies were selected.  That’s what strategic planning is. We call it strategic planning, but it really is about formulating strategy……it really is about deciding & forming & shaping & scaffolding what the organization is going to do over the coming months & years to make a difference — to make an impact — to be successful for its community, its students, its faculty, its staff, its stakeholders.

The strategic muscles an organization needs to build are its decision-making, discernment, determination & delight. I did it! The 4 “D’s” of strategic hardiness. Jane will be laughing. I didn’t plan it, Jane, honest. Why these 4 “D’s”?

Decision-making: before looking around the environment or talking with stakeholders, an organization needs to design its floor routine — its decision criteria. What criteria must the strategic directions and goals meet? Pick these early in the process and stick to the routine - or to the criteria - or you will get confused. And we all know that confusion just leads to chaos when it comes to adults making decisions.

Discernment:making sense of the many forces at play in the environment — judging what’s important, what’s not & which bar bells really need to be used to build this strengths (ok, so maybe I’m taking the exercise analogy too far — but discerning & judgment are so critical, so don’t forget it, ok?)

Determination: to complete the strategic planning, take it through to identifying how you’ll measure your success at realizing the strategies & ideal future, and implementing. Yes! Implementing! That IS what strategy is all about. It isn’t about meetings or word-smithing. It is about being determined & flexible enough to see it through to reality.

Delight: in the process — in bringing people together to share their knowledge of the environment, their visions, their hopes, dreams, their perspectives, their opinions. Life is too short. How can you have fun implementing the plan if it wasn’t fun doing all that muscle building, deciding & discerning? Yes, energy sometimes comes from fear, but it is much more enduring when the energy is ignited by inspiration, laughter & a true desire to reach that vision.

I’ve been setting aside a pile of blog posts, particularly on leadership, that I’m now ready to write.  There’s so much written on leadership, it’s rather daunting to know what to read, or who to read. We can never go wrong with Drucker or Mintzberg or those published with Harvard (you all know by now what a groupie I am of the Harvard Business Review — is there a support group for us?) In fact, HBR has just put out their “10 most read leadership articles” - if you read nothing else, do check these articles out.  Even to scan.

But I always like to ask senior executives what has made a difference for them in their leadership approaches.  A friend who has been a senior executive for the past decade, & who has dealt successfully with unbelievably challenging situations (I say successfully because, #1, he’s still employed &, believe me, the organization he works for doesn’t tolerate incompetence, and #2, employees he works with - LEADS - like & respect him. )  He suggested I read “The Inward Journey of Leadership,” in the Journal of Surgical Research, April 2006. After some digging - & paying - I found it.  And now, I pass his suggestion on to any of you who are in a leadership position (even if that means you have 1 person looking to you for leadership), or are considering moving into a team leadership, project leadership or functional leadership role.

Written by a surgeon who heads up a surgery department, it is very relevant for those in the information profession who have been successful in their profession & then move into management & leadership roles.  Souba talks sincerely and passionately about the challenges facing the health care system — we in the information sector must talk sincerely and passionately about the challenges facing libraries & information services.   And then he describes the four practices or habits needed for that inward journey for leaders:

1. Tell your life story — if only to yourself; “The stories leaders tell about themselves are important vehicles by which they convey to others who they are, their values and convictions, and w=by which they attempt to justify their leadership of the group and their right to represent the organization and its values. ” Yep.

2. Know yourself - knowing the “lens” through which we see the world is critical for us to be aware of & understand the lens through while other people see the world.  “As our self-awareness increases, we improve our ability to receive feedback and to listen generously.  Transformation becomes possible.” Amen, Dr. Souba - Amen.

3. Acknowledge & deal with your own inauthenticity - come on, we all have it at times. It’s really hard to be honest, truthful or authentic all the time.  It’s doable, but it’s tough, & takes courage. And it takes courage to confront it & correct it. Yet nothing impacts people’s trust in you faster than when they sense that your honesty is compromised, and that you aren’t admitting it or wrestling with it.

4. Get in touch with your own spirituality - as Souba says, since spirituality is your understanding of what purpose life has & what they feel the world is about, everyone has spirituality.  “Spirituality has to do with how we experience ourselves in relation to what we designate as the source of ultimate power and meaning in life and how we live out this relationship.” Souba says for “great leaders….spirituality becomes the foundation upon with they hammer out their values and ideals; it shapes their character, informs their choices, and crystallizes their commitments.” Wow. That says it. Values…..character…..choices…..crystallizes commitments.  The elements of leadership.

Leaders can only lead others when they can lead themselves.

Too often we associate “leadership” with being in a senior management position, making big decisions & big salaries.  Oh, we quote Gandi & Mandela, but in the work context we all too look to the CEO’s of corporations for leadership lessons.

Yet the simple truth is that leaders are those who lead people to make a difference - we hope a positive difference!  And the other simple truth is that leaders are able to lead others because they can lead themselves.

Cindy Ross Pederson

Cindy Ross Pederson is a leader who leads herself and others in making a difference - a positive difference. Jane always knows the coolest people; she introduced me to Cindy, whom I met in a coffee shop prior to a client meeting. I was immediately struck by her presence - she conveys presence.  Years ago when Mary Corcoran & I interviewed senior executives about the qualities they seek when filling senior positions they cited “presence — an individual has to have presence at senior decision tables & when they walk in the room.”  Enter Cindy - with her presence, her ability to communicate clearly, succinctly, & in the language of the listener.

Having built a highly successful technology company Cindy sold it for a profit that allows her to shift her focus to being a “strategic volunteer.”  In her former role as entreprenuer CEO Cindy dealt successfully with investors, bankers, employees at all levels, clients, partners & stakeholders.  She had a clear focus, & used that clear windshield to ensure that the company was taking the right turns at the right time — not always easy, not always popular, but necessary to get the company to its successful destination. Now she uses that incredible expertise & talent to work with non-profits to help them channel their efforts into measurable, meaningful differences.

To quote Cindy, “I’ve been working forever, entrepreneurial since 1985, sold my business in 2006 and after orchestrating a very successful merger and exit, I retired at 49. Rather than start another business, I am redirecting my skills, expertise, and contacts towards making a difference in the productive years I have left.” Cindy now volunteers with non-profits to help them “strategically frame and operationalize your corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects or portfolio. The work covers developing or refining a strategic framework that aligns your CSR activities with your business mandate, finding and positioning partners and projects to activate your plans, and establishing metrics that measure and report on your impact. Service fees are redirected to charities.”

That’s a leader.  And what’s even better is that Cindy has an infectious laugh, which just adds to her delightful, tough-when-necessary personality.

Thanks to Jane, again, Cindy has agreed to work with us at OLA’s “Leadership Renewal” on February 24, 2010, where her focus will be, what else? - “clarity”.  I’m so excited.  There’s nothing like working with people with passion, purpose, personality & competence.  Ah…..clarity…..being clear on our purpose, & the purpose of our organizations, services & programs. That’s making a difference.  Check out Cindy’s site.

What a shock — my childhood just rushed through my head when I opened up Google this morning and saw Popeye!  My father had been in the Navy so Popeye was a favorite character in our house.  And remember Popeye’s cans of spinach for strength?  there it is!  At any rate, is it wonderful that Google honors various artists with Google doodles.  Today, E. C. Segar, the creator of the Popeye character is celebrated.  Amazing that he died so long ago but his character lives on, especially in my mind.  Makes me think of durability — durability of buildings like I saw in Rome earlier this year, durability of organizations (not so many ar built to last anymore), durability of practices, even if we would like to change them……..

Rebecca and I have been doing a lot of work with clients recently in pIanning their future direction and mapping out their strategies for getting there.  I think that’s why the words below from James Kobielus in Forresters blog for Information and knowledge professionals resonated with me.  Here’s the first couple of paragraphs Kobielus’ post.

Business is all about placing bets and knowing if the odds are in your favor.

As I noted in my most recent Forrester report, business success depends on your company [or organization] being able to visualize likely futures and take appropriate actions as soon as possible. You must be able to predict future scenarios well enough to prepare plans and deploy resources so that you can seize opportunities, neutralize threats, and mitigate risks.

Clearly, predictive analytics can play a pivotal role in the day-to-day operation of your business. It can help you focus strategy and continually tweak plans based on actual performance and likely future scenarios. And, as I noted in a recent Forrester blog post, the technology can sit at the core of your service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy as you embed predictive logic deeply into …. business process management platforms …. and operational applications.

Jordan Frank of Traction Software has posted the presentation he & Christine Connors (TriviumRLG LLC) gave at the 2009 Taxonomy Boot Camp, “Ontologies & Tagsonomies: Linked Data, Web 3.0, Tag Mush”.  Christine addressed “What do ontologies provide that taxonomies and thesauri lack? What is the big deal about the semantic web? What’s the difference between the semantic web, linked data, and Web 3.0 and what are the technologies that will power this next evolution of the web?” while Jordan explored how driven social tagging can work for or against you and then suggests tagging and search driven entity extraction strategies that can put tagging to productive work.

For those interested in other presentations, the userid and password is tbc2009 at http://www.taxonomybootcamp.com/2009/presentations.shtml

There’s no tougher time slot to speak in at a conference than that dreaded “post lunch.” Humour & good story telling always helps. And that’s what Susan Reisinger & Gregor McLeod brought as they presented “Tools for Knowledge-sharing: Wiki Success Case Study for the US Navy’s Global Distance Support Centre.  Imagine for a moment trying to implement technology to deploy highly sensitive information in an extraordinarily security conscious environment — oh, with no budget. And, that the information may be about how to move a cat from one country to another, or it may be about informing next of kin that their family member is deceased. Oh — and that many of the influencers in the organization have “tribal knowledge” and have been chiefs who held that information.  Those information holders know quite a bit, and they know who to know & who does know.  You definitely want them on board (no pun intended.)

The platform chosen had to have an easy access and easy to use, & allow ppl to attach documents; it had to have a training application, as well as a way to relay and highlight new, hot information - and threads for discussions.  The wiki supports 20 ppl working in the call centre that are responding to the requests of more than 250,000 ppl.  Wow.

The answer? the wiki — a commercial wiki was free, with access controlled via the internet.  It met all the criteria, plus it could be customized by any call centre to meet its unique needs.  Usage can be tracked and refinements made based on experiece.  It has been an easy access into the 2.0 environment for people that don’t text on their phones, probably haven’t heard of Twitter and are dubious of Facebook. The disadvantage has been security, but no classified information has been put on the wiki; like other government agencies, wikis are making their way into their internal intranets — they are looking at using Sharepoint, and they’ve seen a significant shift in the attitude towards collaborative tools like this in the past year.  Another disadvantage was that there is currently no way for the wiki to interact with their crm; this will be a huge step forward for knowledge sharing when this connection can happen.

What have they learned?

- That if they ask ppl what they need on the wiki, those same ppl will then use the wiki

- they did start with content they already had, and then began enhancing that content that may be outside the standard environment — that “tribal knowledge”

- that after a while, ppl will start to ask for content to be added to the wiki

- that a “gate keeper” works in some environments, like the navy

- that giving the wiki prominence as the authoritative source works in engaging ppl

- having a signle authority to review and manage content frequently is critical

- all 20 ppl in the call centre will be engaged in the upkeep

- “even the most resistant will embrace

the wiki when they see how easy it is, and how

it helps them do their job.”

The wiki allowed them to have a son in Iraq r

espond to his family that he was “ok” within 45 minutes of them hearing on the news that his unit had come under fire.  That works.