Margaret Heffernan is a woman who knows her way around information Internet environment organizations. She’s not a noted author, particularly for women entrepreneurs, and is Executive in Residence at Babson College. She got to this point by being CEO of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCAST Corporation, and was named one of the Internet’s Top 100  in 1999, one of the Top 25 by Streaming Media magazine and one of the Top 100 Media Executives by The Hollywood Reporter. Her “Tear Down the Wall” campaign against AOL won the 2001 Silver SABRE award for public relations.

I tell you this to establish her credibility for the rule she established at her companies that “all complaints be accompanied by at least one solution.” She had learned, as many of us have learned, that smart people find faults, &, without firm boundaries, will focus on these faults rather than on improving the situation.  We also know that people tend to put all problems into one big bucket that they stir & stir - with the end result that all problems are given equal weight, not many get effectively addressed, & the organizational culture descends into a toxic pit of low productivity & high pessism. 

Margaret doesn’t talk about categorizing problems, so I will; face it, there 3 kinds of problems or “issues”:

1. those over which you have no control — so move on & focus your efforts where you can make a difference

2. those over which you have some control — deserve some attention, so find some allies & get to it

3. those over which you have total control — AH! the sweet spot - you have the POWER so use it & do something about it

And what do we have total control over? Ourselves — our attitude - our approach. And attitude is everything. Good problem-solvers are just that — solvers.

In “Stop the Whining: How to Stop Corrosive Complaining,” Margaret lays out why the rule of basically ‘let’s focus on what we want to fix & stop perpetuating the problem’ works:

1. it makes ppl think about what’s an important problem to be fixed & worth the cost of fixing - in otherwords, it helps ppl set priorities

2. it encourages ppl to work together & generate good ideas; rather than those in technical areas blaming the front-line or client-facing ppl, they work together to devise innovative solutions (remember, innovative doesn’t mean ground-shaking — it just means different & better)

3. it makes employees see the big picture & to take ownership for the organization — gains buy-in & employee engagement, since ppl can see that THEY make a difference, & not leave things at management’s door.

Heffernan’s advice is aimed at corporate settings, but I’m adjusting the aim towards libraries & those in information functions.  There are some REALLY fabulous libraries out there, and some fabulous information professionals. And, there are some incredibly smart information professionals out there who see the problems & loudly voice the problems, but don’t engage their own efforts or the efforts of their colleagues in solving those problems.  As Heffernan says, “So many companies become the walking dead when they focus on complaints rather than solutions. Does your company have a culture of complaint? If it does, what are you doing about it?” Does your library have a culture of complaint? If it does, what are you doing about it?

The HBR Management Tip of the Day today is from Marshall Goldsmith (author of What Got you Here Won’t Get You There — must reading) about succession planning - a hot topic in the information profession.  I’ve always referred to the need for succession “management”, but Goldsmith refers to succession “development”, & he’s right.  Managing an organization’s succession does have to be a whole process which must be managed, & the emphasis really is on people’s development to enable them to “succeed” in every sense of the word.

Here’s an inter-mingling of Goldsmith’s & our tips for succession development & management; much of our experience has been guided by Rothwell’s Effective Succession Planning.

1. Determine Future Requirements: Recognize that strategic planning, staff planning, & succession management are all inter-related & highly dependent; you can’t move forward (strategic plan) without the right capabilities, competencies (staff planning) & management (succession management). PLUS - how can you determine staffing & leadership needs Call it what it is: succession management or succession development - it doesn’t matter which, just don’t call it succession planning, since the focus shouldn’t be on the plan, it should be on how the organization is ensuring ongoing leadership, management, capabilities & success.

2. Commit: Senior management or the board must buy in to the overall process be supportive of it as on-going, not a one-time “here’s the slide deck” event.

3. Assess Current Requirements & Skills: As with anything, start with where you are - know what you have - a plan is all about moving from where you are to where you want to, or need to!, be.

4. Appraise Performance: Make sure people have agreed-to performance expectations & that they receive regular feedback about how they are doing to keep progressing.

5. Identify Potential: Now……here’s the kicker. Many organizations haven’t really defined what potential “is” — nor have they discussed career plans & perceived potential with employees.  If we want people to move into various positions, especially leadership positions (which, like it or not, is usually what succession management focuses on), then the organization has to be clear regarding how potential is assessed & that employees know this, and know what their current potential is assessed. Eww….. I’ve seen this be the trip-factor for senior management. But don’t let it be.  It’s a very valuable exercise for management.

6. Create & Implement the Development Program: Not just the training program - but a multi-faceted, realistic way in which people are going to be able to grow new skills, mindsets, approaches through experience — secondments? projects? “acting” positions?

7. Recruit, Hire, Place: Use the succession management and staff planning to go after the right kind of current & future talent that’s needed.

8. Evaluate: And know how you’re going to evaluate it when you start out — agree, at the start, on “what success will look like” for the succession management process, and then assess it to see what’s working & what, in the light of the strategic alignment needs to be tweaked.

9. Keep it simple & stay realistic: This is from Goldsmith - & he’s absolutely right.  Although the 8 steps outlined may seem daunting, they are pretty logical and basically simple.  And how else are you going to manage the management progression, keep & encourage talent, and ensure you have the right capabilities?

One last thing about succession management is, as I said above, it usually focuses on management positions.  Remember, though, that there are other non-management yet critical expert positions that need to be included; a gap in these positions is as crippling to your organization as any leadership role.

“Adopting technologies without a strategy results in wasted time & effort”.  How many times have you said this?  Check out KMWorld 2009 keynote speaker Charlene Li’s slides.   Some great tips.  Her theme, “the future of business requires a holistic approach to adopting and integrating emerging technologies” is the same message Rebecca and I use with our clients –  Organizations have to have a big detailed picture of where they are going before the strategies to get there can be put in place.  And that’s way before technology, people and other structures are put in place.

I love Charlene’s slide of 4 focus areas surrounding the client: enterprise strategy, customer strategy, leadership & management, innovation & practices.  Her tips, which I think apply more broadly than just tech planning:

* Leaders must let go of control but not relinquish command, create sandbox convenants to allow risk taking, creat a culture of sharing & model it

* organizations must connect to customers on their own terms, develop internal processes to connect with customers in real time, integrate the customer voice across the whole enterprise

* enterprises must allow all units to pilot new technologies & processes, design process scenarios around user roles, invest in innovation

* to innovate, organizations must fail fast & fail smart, inject fresh external thinking, enable safe places where mistakes and learning is encouraged.

I am sure you will enjoy her presentation on Wednesday November 18 in San Jose at KMWorld 2009. In the meantime, on the KMWorld 2009 conference blog yesterday I pointed to a podcast of Charlene Li. Check it out too!

I just watched Citrix’s webinar that they co-hosted with workshifting.com and gotomypc.com on “Thinking Outside the Cubicle:  The Evolving 21st-Century Virtual Office”. It certainly wasn’t a good webinar, but I did stick through most of it because I’m so hungry for anything that looks at how people are working, are going to be working and the organization implications of working from anywhere.  My forecast is that in the next 5 years we won’t be searching for the right label for this (is it workshifting? working remotely? virtually? off-site? outa-sight?), because it will be so normal and built in to our work processes and organization norms. Telecommuting (yet another term) has increased 39% since 2007 in the US — and it will keep on growing.  The best nugget out of this webinar was a quote from Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research, who says this evolvement “will force firms to expand their digital footprints, harness social software, crisply define their culture and examine their real estate and energy policies.”

Yep - and as the social software improves so that people can truly collaborate, seeing and hearing each other in such high-definition that they can sense when someone’s getting agitated, more organizations and more individuals will embrace working from wherever.  Particularly as those employees born after 1985 come on board; organizations in which employees can work from anywhere realize that the most productive workplaces, especially for younger employees, isn’t about control — it’s about clear expectations, flexibility, respect, responsibility and technology that supports work processes.

We’ve worked virtually for a 100 years - ok, for 16 years, and we worked well with colleagues and clients all over North America. But since the advent of webcams and screensharing (even yuuguu.com - it’s free - terrific), my productivity has increased dramatically.  “Seeing” someone and being able to work on documents together? Fabulous!

Another REALLY interesting tidbit from this session was that those organizations pushing forward with telecommuting don’t talk about it, or “come to the podium” at conferences about their strategies, technologies and results related to employees working outside a formal physical structure. Hm….interesting. Maybe because, as the speaker said, telework highlights and provides solutions to “deficits” in the work processes.  Things that were tolerated “aren’t” and can’t be in telework — things must be explicit and “made visible”.

In terms of what technology is critical for productive telework? Remote access to the files is the NUMBER ONE, even higher than instant messaging.  Understandable.

If you’re interested in this, contact me - & have a look at The Future of Work: Flexible Work - Rhetoric & Reality.

Isn’t it interesting that as the Special Libraries Association, a 11,000+ member organization representing corporate, government, industry, medical, hospital, and legal libraries as well as other specialized libraries residing in larger institutions, discusses once again a possible name change to the 100 year old organization that a there is an organization called The Corporate Library.  Out of Portland, ME, The Corporate Library is a 10 year old research firm that tracks corporate governance issues.  Huh.

ITBusiness.ca’s May 6th issue has a good couple of articles on teleworking or working virtual. The WorldatWork Survey shows that 42% of US firms and 40% of Cdn firms are now offering telework as a way to attract & retain employees. That’s up from 25% in Canada a year ago and 32% in the US.  Good stuff.  Now…..are organizations actually supporting employees in telework? Meaning….do they have the right equipment, objectives, protocals, management processes? Well….not really.  An IDC Study shows that while organizations are equipping employees with lots of mobile devices, they have no mobile strategy — and that means they aren’t mobilizing key business applications. Securit, a Canadian records management firm, is doing some cutting edge work with RIM in bringing SAP CRM to the Blackberry — a key application for sales people.  The real difference that organizations have to understand is that just because there’s wireless access doesn’t mean there’s mobile, ubiqitous (did I spell that correctly?), intuitive access to the application on mobile devices.

There’s another article on successful teleworking in which employees are excelling and engaged.  The Canadian Telework Association has identified the 6 stages people experience:

One: I’m really excited about being able to work from home.
Two: Freedom! I have fewer distractions, more flexibility, a greater sense of accomplishment.
Three: Unfortunately a lot people – myself included – became telework junkies or teleworkaholics, and lost some of our work-life balance.
Four: Possible burn out and frustration.
Five: Lonely and isolated from co-workers and company.
Six: Final adjustment, after you’ve re-evaluated your reasons – individually and organizationally – for becoming a teleworker.
The process of moving from phase one to six may take around two years.

Too often organizations don’t take these phases, or the need for training or different working styles, into account when establishing virtual work.  Nor do organization factor in the competencies employees require to telework effectively. Burnout and isolation can all too easily occur, and, as this article points out, it is important that those teleworking are comfortable communicating at all levels of the organization and request feedback from all those with whome they interact.  I’ve just always looked at this as confidence — those who enjoy teleworking are confident and able to clearly identify expectations and deliverables with their customers, colleagues and management.  If you’re following virtual organizations, check these articles out.

SLA is 100!

It must have been a very interesting world in 1909.  Here are three immediate (to me) organizations celebrating their centennials.  The Special Libraries Association, an organization representing 12,000+ librarians with specialized collections and services in corporations (law firms, banks, pharmaceuticals, manufacturers, hospitals, ettc) around the work, celebrates their centennial this year.  The Toronto chapter of SLA is having a gala to celebrate next month — I’m very excited about attending.  The association’s 100th annual conference is being held in June in DC (where SLA’s HQ has been for many years, including when I was President in 1995/6).  Should be a great event starting off with keynote speaker Colin Powell.

And now we are into ice hockey NHL playoffs and the Montreal Canadiens are 100!  Check out the many jerseys and logos from their past.  I am not a Canadiens fan but I certainly respect their longevity and strength over the years.  It will be interesting to see what’s in their future.

Leons is a furniture store in my area and it is 100 years old too.  Quite a history.  I was most impressed that the current CEO went across Canada celebrating with all the employees.  Nice.

Congratulations to Donna Scheeder on her new appointment as Acting Law Librarian of Congress.  The Law Library of Congress is the largest law library in the world with over 50% of its collection in languages other than English.  The Legal Reseearch Directorate advises the US Congress on foreign and comparative law.  Here’s a recent interview with Donna that Mary Dee Ojala did about the Global Legal Information Network, GLIN, an international co-operative that is headquartered in the Law Library of Congress.  The Law Library is the content owner of THOMAS, the database of congressional bills, documents and laws. Staff of the Law Library reading room remain available to Congress whenever they are in session.

Donna is also very active in her Capital Hill community and is currently the Chair of the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee.  The market will be moving back to its historic building in July following rehabilitation after a devastating fire in 2007.  Donna will be receiving the Capitol Hill Achievement Award at a dinner benefiting the Capitol Hill Community Foundation on April 22, 2009.

Donna is very active in the library community.  She is a past president of the Special Libraries Association, a former member of the Governing Board of International Federation of Libary Association and Institutions (IFLA),  and on the advisory committees for Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian.

Don Tapscott, keynote at FastForward09, built on an his earlier books, Growing Up Digital, Wikinomics, and others as he talked about how a new generation is driving an age of engagement which aligns with the conference theme: Engage Your User.  He talked about his new book, Grown Up Digital, about how disagrees that the net generation or digital natives (also known as millenials and Gen Y) is the dumbest generation (especially check out out Don’s YouTube video on this site) , and about how this generation is a powerful force for change in our world.  He gave lots of examples including a digital native who has a year’s worth of one week jobs, and a 6th grader who went after financing for his business Playspan.  I loved how he talked about the net gen attitude: work=collaboration=learning=fun – that’s the kind of workplace we all should want to see.  And also his caution to organizations who do not allow the use of social tools like Facebook to be accessed.  Here’s something you can use if your organization is one of those:  I won’t go onto Facebook during work time or on work computers if you don’t expect me to answer company emails after hours or on weekends.  Nice!  Check out more info about Don’s talk and book, and also here, on the FastForward Blog.

I’m delighted I’ve finally been able to hear and meet Jon Husband of wirearchy.com.  Jon is one of the few, very few, people working with organizations to help them evolve their organization structures to support the collaborative technologies and resulting work behaviours.  In most organizations there is this horrible disconnect between the hoopla about “working collaboratively” with “social networking tools” and the management practices, reporting relationships and performance expectations. As Husband says, the fundamentals about how we design work (& I add here, how organizations design themselves) hasn’t changed in 50 years. 50 years. Shesh. Organizations can talk the talk about “collaboration”, but to effectively implement collaborative tools and work behaviours they have to walk the walk of new organization structures, management practices and employment expectations and compensation.The hierarchical structure has been based on the belief that knowledge is arranged vertically. But this is no longer the case — now knowledge flows horizontally and chaotically (he didn’t use that term, but I think that’s an apt term — chaos isn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all — out of chaos can come new thinking.)

Ok, so what does this mean for organizations? Well, it means that they will work “ok” for the time being, but until this issue is really addressed, the true benefits of all these technologies and people working collaboratively will not be realized. Husband says he’s bored with this. Me too. He also says that this issue will be addressed during the next ten years. I agree. He also talked about the fact that organizations have to choose different structures depending on what they need to accomplish. Yep - I agree there too. Kind of a blended structure approach. One structure sure doesn’t fit all.

Husband also pointed to some other sources to explore on this topic, including Gary Hamel’s Future of Management , fredcavazza.net, Clay Shirky,  and Canadians Don Tapscott and Dave Pollard. (Jon is also from Canada. Great, eh?)  He
also referred to Malone’s Future of Work  which I’ve used many, many times. But Malone’s work is now 4 years old, and I’m not as travelled as Jon is, but I just don’t see the organizations evolving their structures. So…. the next ten years will be interesting. But if organizations don’t get on with the changes required to their structures and management, then it could be even MORE interesting.  I’m hoping to talk with Jon later today, and one of the issues I want to talk with him about is the impact of this on unionized environments — or maybe, to reframe that — the impact of the unionized environments on this…..