March 29th, 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.
