Implementation of a library RFID management system
Abstract.
In this chapter three case studies of change projects to implement a library RFID management system in academic as well as public libraries are presented.The sections below describe these processes in detail, beginning with the change project in the library, followed by the leadership style and aspects during this change process and the communication style and tools used or, rather, preferred.At the end of each of these case studies recommendations for other leaders overseeing similar change processes can be found.
4.1 Implementation of a library RFID management system in an academic library
4.1.1 The library and its change project
In this academic library – a university library in Germany with 45 staff (34 full-time equivalent), around 10,000 users, approximately 770,000 volumes (including approximately 65,000 e-books), approximately 1,800 print journals and approximately 25,000 electronic full text journals – a library RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) management system was implemented.
The call for tenders for this new technology was held in the spring; the tagging of the RFID-tags began in October of the same year and was ended in March of the following year, by which time the library’s RFID management system was implemented and ready to use.
Right from the beginning of this change project it was clear to everybody that, after the complete implementation of the new RFID technology and a period of transition, the lending of books could be done entirely by the users themselves, without needing the assistance of staff of the ‘Lending Services’ team.
4.1.2 Leadership during the change process
Fear for their future in the library was a normal and anticipated reaction of the team members working in the ‘Lending Services’ unit following the announcement of this new change project.
Noticing these fears and concerns resulting from the pronounced implementation of the new RFID technology, the leader of this academic library saw the need for permanent dialogue with each team member individually as well as in group discussions throughout the entire change process.
During these discussions this leader was honest with his team members and revealed his own concerns about the new tasks for all of them following its completion, and also his thoughts if all their plans and ideas were to come to fruition.
A few years before this change project began, this leader had taken part in a management seminar which led to a totally different leadership behaviour than before. This now helped him as a leader with an extensive change project that needed to be managed.
One result of the newly learned management ideas was to extend the project-oriented organisation of the work and tasks that needed to be done, especially with regard to inter-group working. Thus he changed the formation of the work groups that already existed and brought members from each hierarchical level together to discuss alterations and problems.
With hindsight, this leader of an academic library is sure he could have implemented the new, modern RFID technology one or two years earlier, but he had hesitated in the past out of concern for his team members.
Something else that he would organise differently now is the choice of supplier for this new technology. He should have taken more time to choose a supplier for the library, and nobody took time in advance to write a detailed requirements specification for the RFID management system. All that the leader did was to get information from another library about the technical aspects of the RFID technology implemented in their main library while some of his team members also went to another library to have a look at their RFID management system. It would have been – in hindsight – useful to ask other suppliers of this technology to show them the technical details regarding self-check-in/out, the check-in/out station, book drop, shelf management, anti-theft detection and tagging.
This manager of a university library emphasises how important it was to communicate continuously throughout the entire change project. Equally important was the ongoing preparation for the new tasks and jobs the team members had to face after the change process was completed through their participation in training courses. These training courses ranged from ‘Conflict Management at the Counter’, ‘Complaint Management’ and ‘Internet Research’ to ‘Communication Techniques’, ‘Chat Training’, ‘Web 2.0 Applications’ and many other topics.
Those team members that were interested in the change process and wanted to participate and bring the project forward attended meetings and visited the above mentioned two libraries – which had already introduced a library RFID management system in their daily working routine – to support the process of choosing one of the suppliers of the RFID technology. Those promoters of the change process reported on this over the Internet (wiki) as well as at their regular staff meetings.
Not many team members showed resistance to the new challenges arising from the RFID technology. One reason was that this team was relatively homogenous in relation to its age distribution. There was only one older team member whose upcoming retirement made it difficult for her to be enthusiastic about the new tasks and the need to acquire additional knowledge. The other, younger team members were already used to alterations in their tasks and jobs. They had often been pioneers of new developments in the library and were used to change activities.
To accomplish the goal of inserting 700,000 RFID tags into the library’s media over a specified period of five months, this manager of an academic library was able to use a separate project budget to pay overtime. To make it even more attractive and also to motivate the team members to work at weekends to insert the RFID tags, those teams that achieved their daily goal of 3,000 media could go home and be paid for the whole day, even if they had finished early.
4.1.3 Communication style and tools
This leader had already spent a good deal of his working time communicating with his team members before the change process began, but he also saw the need to enhance his communication channels and the character of their discussions continuously.
Also during this project a change to more modern means of communication was in evidence. For example, every agenda for upcoming meetings was now published in advance through a wiki.
Before this change project meetings used to be a time to get together with team members to announce something, not to debate anything. Now it was also a space to discuss problems, new challenges and anxieties.
4.1.4 After the change project
The positive outcomes of this change project affected not only the users of the university library (which was the main goal), but also the team members.
For the users the process of borrowing a book or any other medium is now more comfortable and faster as they can check out their books and other media themselves.
The staff now have new tasks and duties that are more interesting and qualitatively more significant than before. In addition to other new tasks they are now more involved in social media. The library has its own Facebook account, uses Twitter to communicate with its users and provides help via chat as part of the information desk activities. The members of this team also write a blog and are responsible for the content of their ‘BibTV’, which is a monitor in the library that shows current news and announces important alterations. These are some of the new tasks and duties which they chose as an alternative to the work that is now done by the users themselves. With these new aspects of library work it was possible to avoid personnel reductions in this team as a result of the implementation of the library RFID management system.
There have been other ideas, such as a mobile customer service where members of the team go through the library during opening hours asking users if they need help with something. While everybody thought this a good idea, in the end none of them took it on, although there had been preparatory communication courses especially for these new tasks. The leader of the library will try to start this new service again after a suitable period of time and perhaps some more training courses for his team members.
After this change project was completed the team members attended courses to be able to give better information and advice at the information desk. These training courses included recordings on video to show each team member how they were acting at that moment and what they could do to improve their information service.
4.1.5 Recommendations
Intrinsic motivation is an important aspect of handling such deliberate large-scale changes as in this case study!
Leaders are therefore recommended to have a high competence in communication. However, while they should know the different communication tools and channels, more important is the ‘human aspect’, the type of communication that leads to trust.
Decision-making and responsibility are also critical success factors for major change projects, as it is imperative to solve upcoming problems fast on behalf of the staff.
Even knowing that intrinsic motivation is important, if there is a budget for financial incentives this should be used on the basis of an agreement on objectives and performance to support the change process.
As a leader one has to continue one’s education perpetually, especially through practice-oriented training.
4.2 Implementation of a library RFID management system in public libraries
In the following sections two examples show the process of implementing a library RFID management system in a public library. Both libraries are now using the RFID technology. At first sight you could say that both change projects have been equally successful, and as successful as the implementation of the RFID technology in an academic library (see section 4.1). But are they really? After reading all the sections on the implementation of the new RFID technology (see also section 8.1) the reader can decide which way was best to introduce a new technology that affects nearly everybody in the library and leads to new jobs and duties for a great number of members of staff.
4.2.1 The more participative leadership style
The library and its change project
This change project to implement an RFID management system in a German public library started at the end of 2009 and is still ongoing.
The entire library – comprising a central facility and 20 district libraries with 1.2 million media – is affected by this change. The areas of responsibility of this leader of the central library that were affected by this change covered the ‘Loan Service’, the ‘Central Information’ and the ‘Specialist Information Service’.
Some of the jobs in the area of the ‘Loan Service’ will disappear once the implementation of the new RFID technology is completed. This could be achieved by not replacing staff who retired during the change process, through voluntary relocation of team members in district libraries and through the further education of some team members to enable them to fulfil new challenges and more significant functions.
In addition, the job descriptions of members of the ‘Central Information’ team (now the ‘Service Centre’) changed to reflect the mixed tasks and functions which before were separated into jobs for certified librarians and assistant librarians.
Leadership during the change process
To manage this change project this leader took part in corporate status meetings of the affected areas of work such as the ‘Loan Service’ and ‘Central Information’, and informed his team members at length and at an early stage about the alterations. In order to gather information on the areas concerned he visited the members of all his teams, went to the regular status meetings and used email as a communication tool.
When new procedures were implemented he was always there to try them out for himself and to join in the testing phase.
Some new aspects of leadership were needed to accomplish this change project. While on the one hand a deeper concern for the details as well as increased knowledge of the processes and tasks was needed, on the other hand there wasn’t then enough time left to react directly to every new problem.
Although he couldn’t come up with an action plan for every emerging problem, he was sure that some of these questions, which were caused by the implementation of the new RFID technology, would take care of themselves in time or be resolved through the change process. However, this confidence wasn’t shared by most of the team members.
This leader wanted to inspire his team members to be open concerning the alterations and therefore emphasised the opportunities and benefits resulting from this new technology over and over again.
The difference between irrational worries and concerns based on professional knowledge cannot easily be identified and distinguished in this change process, but it was important for this leader to recognise both in order to be able to react in the proper way, and to take this difficulty into account whenever he interacted with his team members during this change process.
Additionally, the differences between professional categories and their qualifications needed to be considered. There were anxieties and uncertainties among both certified librarians and assistant librarians as well as among the non-skilled and semi-skilled members of the team, although how they were handled was different. The willingness and ability to take on board the change process objectively were different and depended to some extent on the individual’s intellectual capacity and the effort they were willing to expend. This needed to be included in this leadership process.
At the same time there was a risk in underestimating how alterations could lead to the unsettling of team members and how big their inertia could be. Many team members had the need to carry on ‘as always’.
Despite the broad information given early on to every team member there was resistance to this change project. In one team, while their willingness to make changes to the familiar procedures was and remains very low, their dissatisfaction with the actual situation was very high, so for this team it became compulsory to try out different ways of organising the work processes. The leader of the ‘Loan Service’ developed various alternatives and discussed them with the leader of the public library. The leader of the library then gave the directive that two of the alternatives should each be tried for a period of two weeks. After this both alternatives would be evaluated and the better one adopted permanently.
Communication style and tools
What did this leader do to integrate his team members into the change process? First of all, there was a meeting for all members of the central library to kick-start the project, a discussion with each leader of middle management responsible for the ‘Loan Service’, ‘Central Information’ and ‘Specialist Information Service’ (for the historical and the music collection) teams as well as regular project meetings with the main actors of this change project, the leaders of the ‘Loan Service’ and the ‘Central Information’ teams.
The implementation of the new RFID technology has been and still is one of the main topics of every staff meeting.
After the change project
This leader made the mistake of overestimating the competence or willingness of some members of the team to organise themselves. Nowadays he would intervene at an earlier stage of the change process.
Despite these difficulties the change project overall has been successful and the leader has achieved his and the library’s goals so far. But there are still some difficult issues that have not yet been completely overcome, such as a fair and acceptable allocation of the tasks remaining after the automation brought about by the new RFID technology.
Recommendations
By way of advice for other leaders in similar change projects it is important:
to know the different phases of a change process as well as the phases of the staff reaction to change1 (for example, this leader recognised a short intermediate phase of euphoria, which was followed by a deep trough of uncertainty, worry and anger, before the phase of acceptance began);
to communicate the steadfastness and persistence of their own objectives;
to be able to bear the demonstration of resentment from staff;
to be able to motivate the team members during and after the change process.
4.2.2 The more authoritarian leadership style
The library and its change project
In this public library in Germany with around 127,500 media, a library RFID management system was implemented especially to enable the users of the main library to lend their books without needing to line up in front of the lending desk. The first idea from the top management was that most of the working processes should be retained to a large extent. But during the change process it became clear very quickly that this wasn’t just a matter of implementing a new technology but that there was a need to change many of the working processes too. One further challenge was the tight time line: the new RFID technology was expected to be operational within six months.
A new head of the main library with experience in implementing the new RFID technology was found to run this change project. With his experiences from another change project to implement a library RFID management system this new head wanted to do some things differently than originally planned by his predecessor in the main library and the director of the library. He saw the need to modify working processes, and wanted to dispose of the information counter, to rearrange the media, to reduce the library’s media portfolio as well as to automate part of the book return. These ideas were contrary to the intention of the library top management to use the RFID technology only as a self-check-out station.
This leader’s philosophy was: ‘If team members are already changing, it doesn’t matter if they need to change even more.’
Leadership during the change process
A problem for this leader was that he didn’t have the managerial authority to change anything regarding the media portfolio, the information systems or the catalogue. This wasn’t what he expected when he signed the contract to work as head of this main library. This led to a management style which was too straightforward, especially for the other departments.
Reflecting his change process this leader realised that he had been too direct and that he had wanted to do too much at the same time. This led to a lot of resistance and opposition, especially from the team members of the other departments who he wanted and needed to include in his own change process.
This leader tried during the change project to be more participative, but with his brand of participative leadership and bottom-up decisions he asked too much of his team members. For example, the staff were not able to handle emails up to four or five pages long with explanations each day, while asking for responses and feedback about four different ways to alter a working process in the space of a week also overburdened all team members. To complicate matters, often during this week the budget would be altered – generally reduced by the top management – so that each of the four alternatives needed to be updated before anybody could react and give feedback on it.
Because time was short to implement the new RFID technology (six months) the leader became more and more authoritarian instead of changing to a more participative, cooperative and people-oriented leadership style. While he didn’t necessarily come across as authoritarian with his own team members, with the team members of the other departments such as ‘Content Management’ and ‘Information Systems’ it was a different story. At least to some degree he was able to and did act in a more participative manner with his own team members than with other members of staff. For example, one way to be more participative involved building a collective concept of an enemy, thus his team members could concentrate their energies on treating the other departments as their enemies instead of seeing him as an authoritarian leader who wanted to modify everything on his own.
To gain some advantages, this leader did work together with his team members. This meant doing everything needed, even if this was work he wouldn’t usually do, such as collection cleaning and the moving of media or working at the cash register. He knew that he needed these plus factors as an authoritarian leader to keep the change process going. Through doing such work together with his team members he was sending them a signal that he would always be there for them if the worst came to the worst. He also gave praise to his team members throughout the entire change process for the good work they were doing.
However, the leader did recognise that throughout the change process he should have listened more to what his own team members saw as problems and what didn’t work out as planned as well as to the ideas of his team members concerning some of the changes.
Some of the difficulties encountered in this change process were the result of the job-related self-understanding of the team members. For example, the staff working at the information desk especially did not want to be moved to other working places because of worries about the need to do new tasks that seemed to be inferior to their previous work. Other difficulties arose from the relatively high percentage of older people working in this department who didn’t want to change as much as this leader expected them to do. Moreover, the leader had problems with the old-fashioned red-tape style of the librarians in his team.
In order to manage the change process the leader asked other experts from his extensive network for support, such as those who were already working with the new RFID technology in their own library and the data protection officer of another library.
Communication style and tools
No detailed model of communication for the project had been developed in advance. Meetings with the team members were scheduled at three-week intervals but these were often delayed or replaced with ad hoc meetings.
New ways of communication during this process to implement a library RFID management system involved the creation of a blog, written not just for team members but also for the users of the library.
One thing this leader learned in the communication process throughout the change process was that emails, especially those with technological content, should not consist of more than three to four lines.
Another important and often used method of communication in this change process was the personal dialogue between the leader and his team members. The leader always offered his team members the chance to ask him about the change project and the alterations.
During this change process the library’s top management organised a conflict resolution meeting between this leader and the members of the other departments concerning the course of action taken by this change process and the cooperation between the different departments, especially their managers. This conflict resolution meeting was moderated by a member of the works council.
The leader of this change project to implement the new RFID technology in his public library was sorry that only one conflict resolution meeting was held with no follow-up meeting. He believes that had there been more, it might have helped him considerably to complete his tasks better.
After the change project
The leader did realise that not everyone was able to deal with how fast he worked, with the speed with which he made decisions and changed things, or with his self-confidence.
As a result, after the change project was completed, the leader tried to be more participative. He tried to integrate his team members into the decision-making, but this didn’t work out as well as he hoped it might because everybody still saw him as the authoritarian leader he had been during the change project and from the first day of his being their leader.
In hindsight, he would have acted differently in some respects, for example he would have asked the top management for a written contract about the changes that needed to be done with all the competences that were needed to fulfil this task successfully, including the competences concerning changes that needed to be made in other departments. But he wouldn’t have acted differently in the handling of his team members. In his opinion a weaker leadership style with more time for discussions and participation would only have delayed the process.
All in all this manager of a public library says that despite the above-mentioned problems resulting from his more authoritarian leadership style, the missing competences and rights concerning the other departments, and especially the short period of time to implement the library RFID management system, he did reach most of the goals set for him. Although he has now left this library his replacement had only to carry out a few refinements.
He is especially proud of his team members who worked with him to reach the goals of the change project in the time allowed of six months.
Recommendations
This leader recommends that other leaders in similar change processes should ‘be present’ and give the team members permission to ‘Ask me!’, as well as look for face-to-face dialogue with their team members. ‘Being present’ includes working with the team members, even if this means doing tasks that are unusual for leaders.
He also recommends showing courage and trying out new things, leaving the ‘librarian’s perfectionism’ behind and sometimes carrying out alterations without discussing and measuring every single possibility in detail. See and promote change as chance!
This includes the courage to do more than is required. Sometimes it might make sense to change something else as well, in which case it should be done and not postponed till after the ongoing change project has ended. If team members are already changing, a little bit more wouldn’t hurt.
Finally, a leader should promote cooperation between all hierarchical levels.
1The reaction pattern of staff during change processes usually has four stages: denial of the necessity for change, followed by getting angry which includes looking for someone who can be blamed. At that time people resist giving up accustomed ways of doing things. The third stage is one of mourning: after no longer denying the inevitability of change they mourn for what they have lost. In the last phase they accept the need to change and go on (Yukl, 2010).