Planning for the Future
I'm in the first presentation of the day- the wifi is holding out okay; so far so good; steady as she goes…
This is Accelerated Planning by Rebecca Jones. I have high hopes for this - I'm TERRIBLE at planning. I'm impatient, I was to DO stuff. In this way I'm more of techie than I am a librarian… yes, I'm making generalities, but I've noticed, especially in my institution, that traditionally librarians are OKAY at planning, while the techies that have come before me have not at all which has had not-good long-term results. Basically there have been implementations that techies have done, presumably to make the lives of the served librarians better, but they foist something on them, then walk away. They don't talk to them about what they need, revisit them to be sure they're happy with the new product, and they're not always cheerful about providing support. I want to break this trend… doubly hard because I don't want to.
Some little thoughts from the presentation:
Know where you want to end up… what are you doing - WRITE these down… it makes you crystallize it.
What's your decision criteria?
How much time have you got? - don't be afraid to set your own deadlines. If you can't, ask someone else to do it for you.
Planning expands to the time allotted - This is true of most tasks, isn't it?
Take control of the process.
Already know the baseline - I read this as having a team leader who might be the one who's initiated this new project and they should arrive with the team with an documented goals for the end product plan.
Choose a team that's diverse, focused, committed, from many departments, levels of employment, seniority (new and long-term staff)… plan to use them to get staff buy-in.
Who owns the plan - the owner is the person who will implement the plan.
Have a clear goal BEFORE you call a meeting.
Be clear at the beginning that you might not use everyone's input.
Follow through - or you lose your credibility with potential future team members.
[Total aside because I'm doing so many things at once - I'm hearing lots about Konfabulator. I think it's time to check it out.]
SWOT - Oh man, I thought I could forget about this after my management class… but it *does* make sense - know your strengths and weaknesses.
Talk to people about it - get stakeholder input.
Natural light and be comfortable with the risk - if you don't do this, the project will not work.
Teams need a leader.
Be aware of what you're going to STOP doing in order to add something new. Make sure that happens, don't just say it.
No martyrs… we're all busy and we'll share the load.
Apologies for the choppy-ness… I just think much better this way.