Introduction

It is easy for us to talk about our “library” as if it is alive. I catch myself doing this all the time in meetings: “the library will take responsibility for planning the speakers series” or “the library made 10 000 periodicals available through a new database.” Perhaps it is healthy to think of our libraries as living, breathing entities that take action and assert themselves into the lives of our community. If we don’t believe that libraries are alive, then who will?

Yet, as managers and leaders, we must recognize that our libraries do not really exist. Sure, we have buildings, we have information sources, we have technology infrastructures, and we have people. But, our library really never does anything. When action is taken, it is taken by a person. When a patron calls a reference desk, the library does not answer the phone—a librarian does. When the library purchases a book or subscribes to a new database, a person (or people) makes the selection, other people sign the checks, and others process the new resource. In our minds, we envision a single entity that must evolve and grow to remain relevant to those whom we serve. But, in reality, we should picture a group of people who sometimes step forward together and sometimes step sideways right into each other. In fact, many times we are bumbling and bumping our way forward. And, yes, sometimes we are bumbling and bumping our way backward.

Coordination tools

This begs the question, how does this group of individuals work together to reduce the bumbling and bumping? The difference between a group of people just milling about looking up information and a group of people who are actually organized is the ability to coordinate their actions. The reason we coordinate is to divide up tasks effectively and allow individuals to accomplish pieces of the task. In a practical sense, coordination revolves around the use of coordination tools. There are four basic types of coordination tool that should be familiar to all of us in modern organizations: policies, participation rules, budgets and culture. Coordination tools allow people to work toward goals. Ideally, they allow us to work efficiently.

All of us are regularly affected by these tools, but we rarely think about what they do for us. Without coordination tools, each morning we would have to sit down with our staff members and decide not only who would do each job, but also what jobs needed to be done, the rules around accomplishing all of our work, and methods for reporting on our work. We would be starting at step one every day. It would be inefficient, and most likely nothing would be accomplished.

Presidio of San Francisco Coast Guard Station

In the late 1990s, I was lucky enough to start a brand new library for the Presidio Trust in San Francisco, California (Figure 2.1). There were two of us working for a new government entity that managed the buildings of the former army base right on the Golden Gate. It was one of the world’s most scenic spots, with the Pacific on one side, the San Francisco Bay on the other, and the city of San Francisco right out the door. Of course, we spent most of our time inside with boxes of books, land use assessments and environmental impact studies. We started at ground zero, writing policy, ordering software, putting items on shelves, organizing furniture, and generally figuring out what it actually meant to coordinate our actions with the goals of the larger organization. Most days literally started with trying to figure out what needed to be done next. In the early days, we accomplished very few substantive tasks because we had to spend so much time figuring out what the substantive tasks were. This was a necessarily slow and difficult process, but we had little choice. In most libraries, the person who opens in the morning has a well-defined opening procedure. When additional employees show up for work, they step right in and start their daily tasks. It is rare that much conversation needs to happen in order to figure out what should happen next. We have schedules, job assignments and rules that allow us to get work done. We have coordination tools to allow us to understand our work and know how to do it.

In fact, one absolutely vital part of coordination tools is to make work predictable in two ways. First, employees need predictability in their work so that they can plan their work in both the short and long term, understand how their role relates to others, recognize how they will be evaluated so that they can improve, and retain a degree of sanity in their lives. Different jobs include different degrees of certainty and uncertainty. We rarely want jobs to be too predictable because we grow bored with them. However, we also do not necessarily want an erratic work life where the possibilities of success are constantly shifting beneath us.

The second reason that we need coordination tools to make work predictable is because we are offering a service that we hope has some degree of quality. Managers and leaders have a general goal that when presented with similar situations, different employees will take similar actions. We want our employees to understand the goals of the organization and how to act toward those goals. Our libraries are open days, nights and weekends. Our goal should be that our users will be treated and given access to our services in a similar way no matter the time of day or the person sitting behind the service desk. While we recognize that our librarians are not robots programmed to take exact action in specific situations, we also have expectations for quality of service. Coordination tools act as the mechanism within in the organization to maintain service levels and organize work.

What are coordination tools?

The coordination tools that we think of most often probably come in the form of policies. Policies come in all sizes and flavors, but they are generally written. They also tend to be more formal. Policies attempt to codify action, values and approach. They are the most clear attempt to make the implicit something more explicit. Policies include strategic plans, missions, core values, operational policies and written procedures. Ideally, they offer staff members guidance when faced with particular problems. What is your library’s policy on food and drink? What is your library’s policy on children using computers in the adult services area? What is your policy on materials selection? They might not admit it, but most staff members actually like policies. Policies offer clarity. If there is a problem, let’s just write a new policy and fix it. Of course, most of us would rather have a hot poker stabbed into our eye socket than read a policy handbook. Most managers and leaders know that policies are rarely read and that policies alone solve few problems. Nonetheless, they are often necessary, and when implemented in the right ways, can have impact.

Budgets, on the other hand, almost always have impact. Budgets are the essential allocation of resources across the organization. We generally think about money when we think about budgets, but budgets are really about numbers of people, furniture and physical space. If you want to understand the priorities of organizational leaders, take a look at the budget. Money doesn’t solve all problems, but it sure doesn’t hurt. Budgets are an essential coordination tool because they formalize resources distribution between areas and try to balance needs. Often, they are a big part of deciding what gets done.

Perhaps the most overarching coordination tool is culture. It is so big that we may debate whether or not it actually counts as a “tool.” Culture includes the informal rules and human interactions that fill in the gaps between the formal tools. As soon as the first human joins the organization, culture takes shape. The organizational culture defines how people interact with each other. It includes values, purpose and informal rules of interaction. New employees begin being indoctrinated into the culture on day one. Policies may outline formal rewards and reprimands, but culture defines the informal rewards and reprimands, which often turn out to be more motivating. Library managers may not have written a formal policy about parking in the very first parking spot right next to the staff entrance, but everyone knows that this spot belongs to library director and those who dare to park in it will suffer. Culture revolves around symbols, influence and inter-personal connections. I believe that culture counts as a coordination “tool” because it can be used for change. Culture can be difficult and unwieldy, but it can be molded over time. Culture makes many things possible that could never be written out as policy.

Participation rules are the last coordination tool. This is another one that some may question as a “tool,” because participation rules are actually a combination of the other tools. In terms of managing social media, participation rules warrant their own consideration. Participation rules define who gets to do what. They are not just about division of labor, but about the degree of autonomy each individual has within the larger group. Participation rules are defined by formal policies, but they go beyond policies. They also are guided by culture at a day-to-day level. However, we cannot just say that they are the same thing as organizational culture because they are bit more formal. Budgets play a part in this by setting up what managers “own” what resources and how they can dictate action. Participation rules combine formal and informal to form a decision-making structure. Individuals who really understand their organization recognize how to work within this structure to get things done.

On my campus, computer lab space is at a premium. Our library has two computer labs intended for information literacy instruction. If a faculty member wants to work with a librarian, any librarian can schedule these labs for any time of the semester. The labs are set aside for instruction, and the librarians are empowered to utilize these rooms for this service. If a faculty member wants to use one of our labs as an open lab without a librarian, he or she can reserve the room within 24 hours notice just by calling the librarian at our information desk. If an instructor wants to reserve the lab 25 hours from now, it can’t happen. However, savvy departmental secretaries and faculty members know that, as library department chair, I have the authority to bypass this rule. Individuals who understand the participation rules know that they can work around the formal structure by calling me. Of course, most of the time I tell them to get lost, but they still try. My librarians recognize that this is not their decision, and they know that they know that it will be a breach in policy to do this.

Thus, the most essential decision for any employee in any organization is to decide whether or not a choice is their choice to make. When faced with a situation, each staff member must decide whether they need to consult with a supervisor or whether the action is their own. This can include a complex calculus accounting for positive and negative repercussions. Sometimes this may take the form of a library user asking us to bend a rule, and sometimes this may take the form of an employee subtly (or not so subtly) pushing us to do something. We consider the consequences of our actions. Sometimes we take action, and sometimes we go to our boss for guidance or permission. Most of the time, we may not consider this, because most of the decisions we make are very clear. But gray areas do arise. Then we have to figure out how to make decisions. During leadership changes, reorganizations, times of great growth, times of cutbacks, or implementation of new technologies participation rules may change and decision-making might become tricky business for employees. A key part of being in any organization is understanding when a decision belongs to you and when it does not.

The library as loosely-coupled system

A challenge that our organizations face is that we offer services that produce a variety of results. A reference interaction can be highly personalized, and the decisions made by our staff members require significant judgment. There is often a disconnection between types of results and the actions required to reach those results. For this reason, it is useful to think of our libraries as “loosely-coupled systems.” Loose systems in organizational terms were defined by organizational psychologist Karl Weick (1976). Weick argues that we should move away from rational models of organizations that emphasize inputs and outputs towards organizations that are people based. His model considers how individuals make sense of their jobs using coordination tools. He states:

Perhaps, loosely-coupled systems can be best understood by contrasting them with tightly-coupled systems. The classic example of a tight system is an assembly line where the finished product is directly tied to exact steps in the process. Weick (1982) outlines four traits of tightly-coupled systems. First, they have rules. Second, people agree on the rules. Third, there is a system of inspection to judge the fulfillment of these rules. Finally, there is feedback to improve the process. If the car frame is not properly constructed early in the assembly line, then there will be problems attaching the doors later on in the process.

In loosely-coupled systems, at least one of the four traits described above is missing. It can be very difficult to see a process and identify how specific inputs affect outcomes. What percentage of student learning is impacted by my library on my college campus? I am sure it varies widely by student. I know that some students are greatly impacted by our library, that other students do not use our resources at all, and a large number of students fall somewhere in between.

For most libraries, “looseness” occurs in three ways. First, there is a looseness around connecting outcomes to resources. When we increase something like our materials budget or add staff members, we struggle to measure the direct increase in service to our community. What is the exact improvement for each hour of staff time that is added? I have no idea. We try to measure value by showing usage of facilities and getting feedback from users, but connecting inputs and outputs is tough. Increasing inputs by a specific amount does not result in a specific percentage of increased output.

Second, there is a looseness in defining the interactions with users. Some users enter our libraries with very specific and well-defined needs. Others come to see us with a vague idea of their goals and desires. We must adapt our services to meet the needs of the people standing before us. We might use coordination tools to define services and ensure equity of access to services, but most of our services require staff members to adapt resources to the unique needs that arise each day. This means that we cannot standardize what we do. It also means that our services must remain flexible, or we risk underserving users.

Finally, there is a range of looseness and tightness within our own processes. Some processes are tight. Others are loose. The process behind materials acquisition is more than likely much tighter than the process behind reference. Ordering a database requires a tightness in decision making, creating requisition orders, transferring funds and implementing on a website. Subscribing to one database may mean that other resources must be given up, and it may mean that processing of other resources must wait. In contrast, answering a reference question involves a high degree of variability. There may be a system behind reference that involves preparation, scheduling and capturing knowledge, but this is a very loose process. The outcome of one reference question will more than likely have little impact on other reference questions even though the knowledge gained from one question may help with future questions.

Strengths and weaknesses of loosely- coupled systems

As with most things, loosely-coupled systems have strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses of loose systems are that they are inefficient by nature and difficult to manage. They are by nature inefficient because, as mentioned above, it is difficult to connect inputs and outputs. When we add more resources or expand services, it is difficult to know which ones will be the most successful in helping users. A resource may be underutilized for many months, and then, for no clear reason, usage numbers may skyrocket. Matching a community with resources, programming and learning opportunities cannot be accomplished via formula.

The result of this looseness is that managers and leaders are presented with challenges. First, defining how a process or service actually works can be difficult. Our services are tied together. When usage numbers for a particular resource skyrocket, it may be due to a local community group using a meeting room, so the right people were in the library at the right time. Recognizing this is often impossible. Another challenge for managers is recognizing what counts as waste and what degree of inefficiency is just part of the service. The most significant challenge with loose systems is creating feedback loops that channel data and information back into the system for improvement.

Change can be difficult and slow in loose systems. As mentioned above, staff members rely on some degree of predictability in order to split up their work. When staff members do not get clear feedback from the system, they often default to predictability and do not recognize opportunities for change. Managers can be positioned to recognize the big picture and push for change, but they too find it difficult to get useful data and information to really know where to make changes. When connections between outcomes and inputs are fuzzy, then change becomes difficult on all levels.

Of course, the strength of loose systems is that they are very flexible. Libraries demonstrate a high degree of flexibility. We may have trouble measuring outcomes, but we also have a freedom to experiment. As one area of the library is only loosely connected to another, this experimentation can occur in pockets without harming the entire organization. We can explore a range of possibilities and adaptations without requiring the entire system to be reorganized. When loosely-coupled systems are at their best, subunits identify innovation and communicate innovations back across the organization for adoption.

For example, if your library does not use the photo-sharing site Flickr, the staff who organize public events might try it as a way to share and show off events. After they have used it a few times, they start to become the local Flickr experts. When the library director wants to use it to promote the visit by a prominent elected official, then they can ask for support from the local experts. In this way, loosely-coupled systems have a high capacity for storing a variety of innovations for ever-shifting needs in the environment. Of course, the difficulty is knowing how to locate these pockets of expertise, which is why sharing and transparency become important.

This view of our libraries as organizations is valuable when we consider social media tools. Libraries do not operate as monolithic hierarchies where top-down orders produce standardized actions. Our libraries employ a diversity of people working in largely decentralized ways to serve our patrons. Our libraries are centers of rich creativity that offer flexible and adaptive services. As we consider social media tools, we must consider how the tools emphasize our strengths and how they address our weaknesses.