Scenarios and implementation
This chapter
The journey of creating a scenario or a new story about your organisation is almost complete and with that a new process is to begin. This chapter will deal with the successful implementation and the sustenance of that achievement. There will be a discussion of the major issues to be mindful of and the more ‘left-field’ disruptive issues which may impact on the organisation.
Preferred Library Scenario
The preceding chapters have enabled us to arrive at a word description of the future we want for our organisation in say three to five years’ time. Key elements of the Preferred Scenario have also been identified. A good example of these elements is included in the Preferred Scenario for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. These Key Elements will assist both in the marketing and in the strategic planning. It has had a great deal of input from various people, users, stakeholders and staff. The Preferred Library Scenario is a document to be proud of as it articulates a shared community view of the future the organisation is now being directed toward. A great investment has been made in this document and therefore there needs to be a strong return on that investment.
There are any number of ways in which the Preferred Library Scenario can be used. It is essentially a tool for marketing, a strategic planning filter, and a broad roadmap.
Marketing
An integral part of the Preferred Library Scenario should be the title of the Scenario. The title should be imaginative and marketable. The examples in the case studies in Chapter 9 bear witness to this: The Learning Village; Moving to the Front of House; The Learning Hub. The title should describe in a few words what the essence of the scenario is. This title will become synonymous with the work which will proceed to achieve the Preferred Scenario.
The most essential marketing step is to have the Preferred Scenario validated by the most senior person in the organisation to which the library belongs. This will give the authority of the organisation to the Preferred Scenario, as being the accepted future for the library. This is a vital initial part of the marketing effort. Beyond this a marketing plan should be drafted so that the scenario and the library’s future intentions can be made plain to everyone. Remember in this process that the best groups who will support your plans are the members of the focus groups and scenario construction groups who have helped to contribute to and to construct the scenario. They are in a sense your ‘Scenario Alumni’. They are a powerful group to re-enlist over the next few years and to further sell the scenario across your organisation.
The initial marketing can be very simple. It can be as simple as having a ‘roadshow’ visiting every faculty or group in your community. In the case of a consortium, it may be taking the scenario to groups of member libraries across the geographic boundaries of the consortium for wide ranging input and discussion. Roadshows are very effective devices, marketing what has been done and then gaining support for the strategic resourcing of action plans emanating from the scenario. Both outcomes are important in the short and medium terms. The Roadshow can be formal, whereby visits are organised to stakeholder groups in the institution or community. They can be informal as well, with displays in the library or around the community spaces.
Strategic planning
The Preferred Scenario needs to be put into action and this is where the strategic planning tool comes into play. If scenario planning has identified the future, then strategic planning will help to allocate the resources and establish the plans by which that future can be met.
The translation of the Preferred Scenario into a Strategic Plan needs identification of the key elements in the scenario. This can be done by analysing what forces came out of the scenario processes and were finally articulated in the Preferred Scenario. Typically there will be eight to ten major forces. These areas of focus will sharpen the Strategic Plan. These will effectively be the main strategic areas for the near future. Some of these Elements may be within a grouping such as Learning or Building. But the elements will emerge as strategic action areas in a plan and will need to attract funding for their successful implementation. It is not the intention of this book to describe the Strategic Plan processes except to say that the plans will emerge from the scenarios as necessary actions in order to meet the scenario. Looking at the various scenarios in the case studies in Chapter 9, it is instructive to look at the emerging elements.
Using the Hong Kong Polytechnic Scenario it became clear that there were nine key elements. They were: Outreach, Print Value, Research Involvement, Integral Contribution to the Institution’s programmes, Sustainability, Everywhere, Digital Lives, Avatar Librarians, and Social Spaces. These headings broadly described what the Scenario was describing. It was especially the case that the strategic was driven by the need for the library to be everywhere; to be as digital as it could, even using avatar librarians; to outreach to its clients; and to create social spaces in which print would integrate with the digital in a sustainable environment.
These key elements were eventually grouped into six strategic areas which were: Collection Development; Learning and Teaching Engagement; Research Enhancement; Communication and Promotion; Partnership Development; and The Skilling of our People. While the strategic areas have been very effective they would never have driven the scenario. The imagination in the scenario drove the vision and the future. The Strategic Plan is translating that imagination into reality.
Roadmap
As a roadmap, the Preferred Scenario should be used in all the planning documents for budget, quality, staffing or capital. It is also important to find expression in the requests for the funds needed for operations, of the quality ambitions, of the skills and staff needed to achieve the Preferred Library Scenario (PLS) and of the capital needed for equipment and physical buildings. As that roadmap, it should be referred to often, so that all are aware of the document and what it foresees. It should also be used for review purposes in each year beyond the articulation of the Scenario. It should be a constant testing board. It is good to remind everyone of what is being achieved over time that was articulated in the Scenario. ‘Why did the library create a softer and warmer collaborative learning environment?’; ‘Why did the library create a coffee shop?’; ‘Why are we structuring the library staffing in this way?’; ‘Why are we removing books from the library and storing them collaboratively with books from other libraries?’ The answer is simple: it is because the Community articulated them in the Preferred Library Scenario. That the Community was behind the Preferred Scenario and its many elements is a very strong indicator of support. It would be clear to anyone observing the process that the ‘community’ perhaps did not want all the elements in the scenario, but various forces wanted one aspect or another. The scenario is clever in that it can coalesce these various forces into one vision. It is apparent that it is impossible to direct cats in one direction but it is possible to herd cats into a general direction. The scenario process can balance and harmonise apparently contradictory forces into the one direction. It is also an excellent vehicle for change, allowing users and staff to move gently yet firmly from one position into the future.
Keeping the scenario alive
The Preferred Scenario will not ‘live’ for ever. After eighteen months to two years the Preferred Scenario should be reviewed, not to revitalise the Scenario itself but to review what has been achieved in a strategic sense; what has not happened and what needs to happen. In such a strategic review, it will be instructive how much has been achieved and in what ways. It will also be noticed how much change has happened that was anticipated and how much that was not anticipated. Remember from Chapter 1 that the future is not linear but that decision points along the way drive us in one direction or another. Within the preparation time of this book, the global financial crisis settled on all our plans like an enveloping glue, slowing everything down and making previously possible plans near impossible or at least severely postponed. Chapter 8 of this book will talk about the roadblocks along the path to the final implementation of the Preferred Scenario. It will discuss the issues of chance and worst case scenarios affecting the final shape of the organisation, its services and staff.
Mid-term review
The mid-term review will hearten staff who have put so much energy into making it all happen. They will be heartened by looking backwards and realising what has been achieved. Sometimes the achievement will not be what was intended, and it may be at a tangent to what was conceived. An example of this might be where a complete revitalisation of a building might have been intended whereas only a partial project could be achieved. This is not a problem of the desired scenario but rather a reality of the organisation’s financial or implementation capability. Another example might be where the scenario called for the construction of a coffee shop. During the implementation it may become clear that this will not be possible to achieve in the short term for a variety of reasons. An alternative might, however, be possible. A coffee cart parked outside the library may be readily achievable as a first step toward the ultimate achievement. The scenario may have called for the organisation to grow in certain directions. The growth may not have been what had been envisaged but has resulted in amalgamations with other similar organisations to create a different but nonetheless powerful organisation.
The point is that, in the phase of implementation, the reality will, more than likely, be different, but in the same or a similar vein to what had been foreseen. So a formal mid-term review is very desirable to ensure that the organisation is on track or that it needs adjustment or that particular areas need more emphasis or resources. It is mostly the case that resources are not overly abundant in any organisation but it is the management of the resources which is critical. It will require considerable focus on the part of the organisation’s management team to keep a sharp eye on what was intended to be achieved. Despite the vagaries of day-to-day operational concerns and issues, it is crucial to stay focused.
The convening of the ‘Scenario Alumni’ could be a useful occasion to deliver a Report Card on the perceived and actual performance. The report card could be structured in any of a number of ways and delivered in a variety of ways in a workshop or cocktail occasion. This would be a different exercise to a Business Plan or Strategic Plan report. It is a re-assembling of those who had the initial imagination; who saw all the pieces of the different scenarios merge into a Preferred Scenario. They will deliver a warm critical view of what has been achieved. They will also reinvigorate the Strategic Plan to achieve the Preferred Scenario but, just as importantly, they will re-ignite the enthusiasm in the Community for what it was envisaged would be achieved.
The staff in the implementation of the Preferred Scenario
In any review such as is described above there is inevitably a re-positioning of the staff resources within the organisation. The staff are an organisation’s primary and most important resource. It is the only way in which objectives can be achieved. We have talked in earlier chapters about the effect of change on staff and users alike. In some ways change has a different dimension for each group. The user community may be characterised as wanting change more strongly at the service end while the staff may be characterised as wanting change in a more carefully measured manner. So the gap between the two groups on a continuum of change could be great and growing. Change in the structure and role of a library staff is important if the organisation is to meet the scenario articulated by the user community in the Preferred Scenario. This change will not take place overnight but over a period of years as the organisation is adjusting to a new purpose. The Strategic Plans set in place after the construction of the Preferred Scenario would have created new actions for the organisation and with these actions would have come the need for new skills and staff, and actions which did not occupy them previously.
This mid-term review will provide an opportunity to understand both how the staff still feel about the Preferred Scenario and how they are going about changing their roles, their work and their view of the library in their community. Peter Sidorko, in the final chapter of this book, talks about change and its impact on an organisation from a practical and theoretical perspective. As Sidorko says: ‘The process of getting people involved in developing the preferred scenario that actually does result in a satisfactory outcome and a sense of ownership by participants is not the end of the journey.’1
The Preferred Scenario will be a unifying force among the library staff. It will enable those who want the library to move to a new model to see that vision articulated in the Preferred Scenario. It will also assist those who were reluctant to see change to move gradually toward this new future. This document will draw people together through the business of actually constructing the future.
1.Sidorko, P. (2010). See Chapter 10 of this volume, p. 189.