Preface
The environment in which libraries exist is made more difficult by three driving factors: firstly, the pervasive nature of the web; secondly, the financial pressures on libraries and their funding institutions; and thirdly, the perception that libraries no longer play a dominant role in the future of their institutions or communities. Indeed, the view is often held that libraries are ‘leftovers’ from bygone eras.
These factors are creating entirely new operating conditions for libraries. Library planners need fresh tools to revitalise their understanding of this new ‘set of conditions’. Scenario planning, as a planning tool, has an impressive track record for organisational future-setting. Scenario planning does not provide the ‘answer’ but rather a series of viable options. This technique successfully offers fresh perspectives on organisational futures. In the library environment it is equally appropriate for different library sectors as well as for small and large consortium organisations.
Scenario planning is a tool used as a precursor to strategic planning. There is a clear distinction between strategic planning and scenario planning. Scenario planning is an imaginative process, creating stories of the different futures from which each organisation, their users and staff may choose. It is a series of tools to engage stakeholders, users and staff in the creation of new vital futures for the library or information agency. Strategic planning, on the other hand, is an administrative tool, often formulaic, allocating resources with which to meet the chosen future.
Without augmentation, the Strategic Planning tool does not visualise new futures for the library or information agency. Strategic Planning without prior Scenario Planning most often perpetuates the past; it allocates resources to projects and directions but does not have the capability to let go of former practices. Unaided, Strategic Planning was the dominant Planning tool of the 1960s and 1970s. Not now! Those older style Strategic Planners are retiring and the new generation of library managers – facing a future of ever accelerating change – need Scenario Planning to help their thinking.
The book
The book is a thought-provoking development of thinking on the future of libraries. It provides tools to assist all library and information professionals to re-conceptualise their future and that of their organisations. It challenges the foundations of many an understanding of what libraries could be. Infused into the text is the means by which the reader can benefit from the processes of Scenario Planning. The tools to draw insight and inspiration are those used in Scenario Planning. The chapters in this volume are new Scenarios for libraries. They are partly derived from successful Scenario Planning exercises actually completed over recent years. The readers of this book will gain new perspectives through developing different scenarios of library futures, as well as a clear understanding of how to replicate them in their own environment.
The book is presented in the following manner:
What are scenarios?
The first chapter will draw the readers immediately to the potential of new approaches when thinking about the futures of their libraries. It will briefly highlight what Scenarios are and how they can impact so strongly on the well-being and vitality of an organisation, its stakeholders and staff. It will discuss the merits of having different options to allow new and imaginative approaches to library futures.
The complexities of our informational environment
Looking at our current operating environment will be tempered here by creating perspectives of what has happened to our operations and what could happen. Before we can create Scenarios we need to understand what is happening in our immediate and wider environments. Attempts are made here to highlight the ‘left-field’ influences as we often do not see them until they are right upon us. Various tools and techniques will be used to illustrate these points and to use a backward-looking view to actually look forward. This will help the readers to understand the nature and power of Scenarios as stories of what has been and what could be.
The future and the past: models are changing
This chapter will look at where libraries and consortia have come from and the characteristics of their development, drawing on global examples as much as possible. The concept of the future will come into sharper relief as it is difficult to understand, let alone predict. This chapter will also deal with what has happened, what is happening and what will happen. It will especially deal with how we might begin to re-focus our thinking so that we can more easily and readily see the trends affecting us and our organisations. It will begin to reflect on how our library business models are changing.
Consortia are a relatively recent phenomenon emerging to meet needs of individual libraries to gain more traction on price and other negotiating issues. Consortia are now themselves merging and seeking new perspectives to assist their member libraries. There will be a discussion on how to begin the hard decisions to break out of the established mould; how to show leadership in achieving this. Strategies will be discussed as to how to assist in convincing others of the merits of a new approach and how to design relevant processes.
Understanding choices
When dealing with choices and ambiguity it is easy to become confined. This chapter will discuss this issue in the context of how to establish and execute the Scenario Planning process. There will be exercises designed to create a frame of mind in which we know that ‘we can choose’. The Scenario Planning process is described in terms of how it operates, what the variable components are, what the critical success factors are and how to optimise application of the process. Implications of seemingly simple decisions are explored, as are the consequences of not looking forward and acting accordingly.
Toward a new way of thinking
The purpose of this chapter is to move ourselves and our staffs into a space where good ideas are not dismissed because they are too expensive, too staff intensive, too this or that. ‘We cannot do this because of this or that or that or this!’ It is a matter of moving people out of that mental space. This requires some effort and some skill. The skills and appropriate outlook will be explored in this chapter.
Designing your process
Scenarios can be best understood in everyday work and life situations. This chapter develops techniques to enable this to happen. This will grow the understanding of the Scenario approach at the institutional level.
Scenarios and implementation
This chapter is very practical, exploring techniques to get different forces in the institution to agree, to work together and to enable ‘buy-in’ to the process and the outcomes. This describes various approaches available to move toward the actual scenario construction. This approach will note that most processes will develop multiple Scenarios reflecting the range of choices which libraries have. How to deal with multiple scenarios will be crucial.
Choice, chance and (less than) certainty
It will be important to take stock as the Scenario creation process draws to a close and prepares for implementation. This chapter looks at the creation of an alignment between the Strategic Planning process and the operations plans. Identifying immediate/short-term/longer-term actions will be discussed from political and operational viewpoints.
Case studies
This technique has been used on a number of occasions and a number of actual scenarios are replicated in this chapter. These are some of the scenarios which have derived benefit from the very exercises and processes that are explored in earlier chapters.
Implementation and the impact of change (by Peter Sidorko)
Despite recent turbulence in the information world, successful change remains a difficult matter for implementation in libraries, and indeed for most organizations. As a major strategy for change in an organization, the Scenario Planning process must be introduced into the organisation by adopting many of the established success factors for change. Included among these are the identification of a problem (the reasons for change), the developing of a shared vision, communication and ultimately embedding the change. Despite such well established strategies in the literature, formulaic implementation is impossible.