March 29^th, Cabinet had our first of three retreats designed to set priorities for [2017-2019] and action plans for 2018. The time we spent together reminded me of how important and at times challenging collaborative work is. In the face of rapid changes in higher education, the scholarly information environment, and user expectations, the kind of problem solving and innovation that comes from working together is more important than ever.

Working together is not new for those of us working in the libraries. We have decades of experience with councils, committees, and task forces that have made libraries examples of organizational cooperation within the broader higher education community. Almost everything we do in the libraries requires expertise from multiple units.

I have challenged myself to come up with examples of services that we provide that do not benefit from multiple perspectives and can’t think of one. Everything from designing the discovery interface to making a sign is improved when people with different ideas and points of view work together.

Unfortunately, the same forces that make working together so important also create organizational and logistical challenges. These include the need for clarity related to decision-making; accountability and authority to assign work; group norms that enable productive work; and time. Each of these could (and may) be its own topic for The Agenda. But for today, I want to reaffirm the value of and need to work together.

A few years ago, I went in search of examples of effective teams from outside of libraries. During that search, I read Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace. Ed Catmull is (among other things) the cofounder of Pixar Animation Studios. In the book, he describes how teams worked together to create Oscar-winning movies like the Toy Story series and Up.

When I began reading the book, I thought that there would be little that libraries could learn from an animation studio. As I read, I saw many parallels between the unseen forces that the folks at Pixar faced and what we face as an organization. I realized that the similarities made perfect sense—providing information resources and support for faculty and students in a time of such rapid change require true inspiration.

Toy Story happened to come out at a period in my life where I was following Disney animation. It was interesting to hear the messy, non-linear process that went into developing the movie. When I watched Toy Story and other animated films, I assumed that they began with a script and added animation and voices. They don’t. They start with an idea (a loosely define goal) and the details of the story emerge through a collaborative development process.

Catmull’s idea for a script seems to map well to the libraries’ goal for a project or the purpose of an initiative. The book describes the approach that Pixar used to move from an idea to a complex and convincing story. What I liked about the book was that he didn’t just describe ‘what they did good’ at Pixar. He talked in depth about serious challenges and how the group worked together to produce consistently excellent results. It was shocking to me that the didn’t start a project knowing what the outcome would be.

He talked a lot about the importance of sharing expertise, valuing perspectives, and still making progress. He believes that the ability for groups to have open, honest discussions ultimately results in the best outcomes. At one point in the book, Catmull states that “The healthiest organizations are made up of departments whose agendas differ but whose goals are interdependent. If one agenda wins, we all lose.”

In this time of rapid change, many of the carefully designed formal communication structures and group processes that we have developed over the years may be a thing of the past. But we still need to work together. We live in a time of multiple competing priorities, continuous reexamination of goals against our intentions, and digging deep to ensure that we understand the evolving information and education landscape. We need the kind of creativity and problem-solving that can only happen with active exploration of problems from multiple perspectives.

Our challenge will be to develop an organizational culture that supports the way we need to function in this environment. We can’t feel like we are always stumbling into the future. We have to appreciate that we are learning to do new work that lacks established models and best-practices and to value openly exploring issues and group problem-solving. Catmull’s approach “is to accept that we can’t understand every facet of a complex environment and to focus, instead, on techniques to deal with combining different viewpoints. If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse.”

We addressed some difficult issues at the Cabinet retreat. We had multiple perspectives at the table and we had some difficult but productive discussions. We didn’t make any decisions, but I think we made progress toward developing a clearer understanding of the issues that we are facing. We will be looking for your insight as we make decisions regarding priorities. These may be small steps towards creating a more open and collaborative culture, but I think we are heading in the right direction.

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Say it isn’t so!

Believe it or not, the 2018-2019 planning process is beginning.  This will be our third planning cycle under the RCM model, so we are gaining an understanding of the flow of things.  Over the last few weeks, Cabinet has developed a planning calendar to guide our strategic discussions and budget requests.

Based on what we have learned in past years, our planning process can be thought of in three phases.  In each of the three phases, we have to address library planning for the upcoming fiscal year (2018) and future year (2019) budget requests.  (I know, this is where everyone’s eyes glaze over, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds!)

Why three phases?  Rutgers Libraries serves the needs of three distinct campuses and a health system.  We need to support the unique needs of each of the communities with a single shared infrastructure.  In the first phase of the process, we address the feasibility of initiatives and look for ways to optimize our infrastructure.  By doing this together, we have a transparent process with many voices at the table. The second and third phases address two necessary parts of planning – creating a plan and creating a budget.

Phase 1: Environmental scan.  During this part of the process, the library directors will assess the needs of their local communities, identify gaps, and develop a list of local priorities for their collections, services, and spaces.  It will be up to each library director to determine how they conduct their local process, so if you have questions, be sure to ask your director.

At the same time, infrastructure units will be assessing their capacity.  What projects are starting and ending, are there projects waiting to start?  Are elements of the infrastructure outdated or at capacity?  This analysis will result in a better understanding of the capacity of our infrastructure and whether we can take on new services.

In late March, Cabinet will meet in an all-day retreat to review priorities and activities and to identify themes and overlap. We will look at the capacity of our infrastructure and determine which priorities we can accomplish with our existing infrastructure, which will need additional funding, and which should be tabled until the next planning process.  This meeting will result in list of priorities that have been vetted for feasibility for further consideration.

One of the challenges we face is that because we have yet to receive our working budget for 2018, we can’t be certain which priorities will be covered by our 2018 plan and which may have to become part of a future budget request. So, for the time being, we will include all priorities in a master list so we don’t miss anything important. In April, we expect to receive our working budget for 2018, which will give us essential information into the staging of the priorities.

Phase 2: Develop a 2018 plan.  At this point of the process, we will have all the information we need to establish our plan for 2018, which we will do at a late May retreat.  We will use the working budget to separate the master list of priorities into two categories: priorities that have 2018 funding and are therefore part of the 2018 plan, priorities for which we do not have capacity.Before finalizing, the 2018 plan will be returned again to the units giving directors a chance to discuss these activities more broadly on campus. Since many items on this plan will take more than a year to accomplish, the 2018 plan is then incorporated into the Library Priorities spanning 2017-2019 that will be announced at the State of the Libraries meeting in December 2017.

Once we have made our plan for 2018, we are left with a list of priorities for which we do not have capacity. This is where things become more difficult as we have limited resources and must decide which priorities will be included in the 2019 budget request and which will be postponed.  I have learned in my time at Rutgers that it is difficult for us to say that we are not going to do something.  We have a talented, capable group and I have seen amazing things accomplished; but it is important for us to be clear about what is possible. Which brings us to developing our 2019 budget request.

Phase 3: Develop a 2019 budget request.  In this phase, we take the list of priorities that do not have funding and determine what we should do.  Are the priorities important enough to develop budget requests?  We have learned that the most successful budget requests are based on data.  For example, we received funding for new information resources because we could provide evidence of use of similar resources.  If the priority is not well suited for an external budget request, is it something that we might internally fund through the reallocation of resources?  Or is it something that has to be put on hold?  At a Cabinet retreat in August we will finalize the budget requests.

After a few months, the entire process will commence again with the plan for 2018 and budget request for 2019 quickly seguing into the plan for 2019 and the budget request for 2020. The planning calendar that cabinet has developed will help us stay on top of this process and  ensure that we are doing the right things to make Rutgers better. The process takes months and is continuous, but this has hidden benefits – there are breaks throughout the process that give Cabinet members time to communicate and seek feedback about the progress and because the process is thorough and transparent, we will end up with a cohesive and targeted plan that we can all support.