Thanks to Deborah E. B. Keller, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Humphreys Engineer Center Support Activity Library for the this article: Engineering Your Library for Change, or, everything that I needed to know about change I learned from my customers. This article was originally published in the 2009 Best Practices for Government Librarians: Change: Managing It, Surviving It, Thriving on It. The 2009 edition includes 60 articles and other submissions provided by more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more.
Read on...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has a couple of main responsibilities. We are a construction agency. We are responsible for military construction projects all around the world, but we also work on many civilian infrastructure projects such as dams, levees, and bridges for other federal, state, and local government agencies. We also are concerned with environmental stewardship. We restore environmental areas used for military purposes, manage waterways throughout the United States, and work with other agencies to restore wildlife habitats and mitigate pollution damage. While this is certainly a very simplified explanation of my agency’s role in the federal government, I find that it provides me with a good metaphor to explain what I have learned about managing change since I began working here.
Blueprints are Always in Drafting
One of the customers who keeps me busiest is Rich. Among his responsibilities is the USACE Campaign Plan. This strategic plan for our agency, like most in federal agencies, is based on the priorities of the current administration, our organizational parents, and the senior leaders within our agency. The team that he leads meets regularly, discussing the missions of the Army, the goals spelled out in previous organizational documents, and the latest emphasis or new initiative that the Chief of Engineers has articulated. All of these initiatives must be brought together harmoniously to establish a way ahead for our agency.
I find it interesting, though, that as a part of the Department of Defense, we talk about organizational strategy in terms of a “campaign,” rather than adopting industry’s language of a “corporate strategy.” Like a military campaign, writing the campaign plan seems to have a “battle rhythm,” a term that the strategy team uses to talk about the pace and timetable of the documents that are produced. The strategy documents that are written form our organization’s “battle plan,” but as any military historian will tell you, the battle never quite goes the way the plans were written.
Like many organizations, the Corps of Engineers is simultaneously writing its organizational strategy and executing it. In the engineering, architecture, and construction arenas of our work, this approach is referred to as design-build. It means that the architects and engineers are working one or two phases ahead of the actual construction of the building that is being built. In other words, the blueprints are always in draft form until the project is complete. Even then, the building which results will very likely have some creative adaptations to problems that the plans did not anticipate. Successful planners, like engineers and winning Generals, are those that know where they want to go, but are flexible enough to modify their plans along the way.
Hire a Good Project Manager
Susan, a quality assurance manager from our Alaska District, tells me that the most important ingredient to a successful construction project is to hire a good project manager. Most projects bring together experts in a variety of different technical fields, and one job of the project manager is to teach them how to communicate with each other. The project manager isn’t necessarily the team leader, she explains, but rather the person who sets the project timeline and the operational ground rules for everyone involved.
Susan shared with me that in most projects, the people involved provide the most conflict in any project and are their own barriers to progress. She describes the project manager like a teacher, providing lots of rules and guidance at the beginning of the project, then giving the subcontractors increasing amounts of freedom as the project goes on. She teaches them when to consult with subcontractors from other components of the project, when to share information about how their own component is going, and when to ask questions. The goal, she said, is to get everyone to contribute their specialty toward the common goal. To do that, everyone has to understand their particular role in the project as well as the roles of the other participants.
Even once individual personalities and contractor groups have “gotten on board” with the project, having a coordinator is essential. Contractors excited by a project often race to finish their work, unwittingly causing accidents and cutting corners. At the same time, unforeseen problems in another aspect of the project may slow things down while the engineers work out a solution. Both situations result in uneven project progression, often necessitating that one group of subcontractors wait for another to complete their task before work can begin again. The project manager monitors each step of the project as it goes along, adjusting the speed and emphasis, bringing together all components of the project to form a whole.
Change initiatives require similar management. People are often the biggest resistance to change, whether they expect change to occur overnight or they resist changing altogether. A change manager will help individuals and groups accept the change that is coming and manage their expectations about it. Similarly, a change manager can help to moderate the speed of change, speeding up at times and slowing down at others, so that everyone affected reaches the end of the change initiative together.
Make it Sustainable
In addition to the building projects that the Corps of Engineers manages, an increasing amount of our work is devoted to environmental restoration and sustainability efforts. Karen, a futurist thinker, repeatedly asserted that sustainability is not just about the environmental and building practices that minimize the use of natural resources so that we don’t run out. Instead, she asserted that sustainability was inherent in everything that we do. It is how we arrange our lives so that what we do goes on indefinitely.
I find this is the real key to change—making it permanent. If we think about making change in small, sustainable steps rather than making big changes all at once, we might hardly realize that we are making changes. In a construction firm, this might mean incorporating a renewable energy source such as solar panels into the design of a new building or improving the insulation so that less energy is required to heat or cool the structure. In a library, it might include cross-training staff members to guard against loss of personnel, or shifting little-used print resources to electronic formats so that the library requires less physical space. I think we’d all agree that we want libraries to continue existing. We must consider, then, small ways that we can change to make our libraries and our profession more sustainable.
Keep Four Pennies in Your Pocket
Though not strictly a customer, this recommendation comes from Phil, a co-worker who responded sarcastically when I asked what advice he has about change. Phil says that every morning, he makes sure that he has four pennies in his pocket. That way no matter what he buys during the day, he can be fairly sure that he is able to provide exact change. Similarly, he shared wisdom learned through years working overseas that you should always carry enough cash with you so that you can afford to take a taxi home from wherever you go during the day. Phil’s sense of humor always makes me laugh, but at the heart of both of his suggestions is the notion of scenario planning.
As you plan for the future, whether looking years ahead or just to the end of the day, you envision several possible outcomes. For example, think about what you are going to do for lunch tomorrow. You could pack a lunch, grab a sandwich at the office, go out to a restaurant, or skip lunch completely. When you start to consider or evaluate these possible scenarios, you will realize that some are more likely than others. I wouldn’t get through the day without eating, so skipping lunch is just not an option for me. Our office has a small snack bar, but rarely offers anything within the boundaries of my mostly vegetarian diet. So, my options are generally limited to packing a lunch or going out to a nearby restaurant. When I look at what I have in my refrigerator, the time I get up each morning, and my task list for the day, I’m often pushed in the direction of one of these two scenarios which is my most likely course of action.
When we consider a change initiative, going through a similar scenario planning exercise can be helpful. It might be helpful to consider your organizational environment and picture what the library might look like three years from now. Ask yourself, “What would it look like if this happened?” and describe the staff, services, and physical space that results. Once you have several options, analyze them. What is the most likely outcome? Is that the outcome that is most desired? What changes, if any, are required to get there? What must change to prevent undesirable outcomes? This visioning exercise can serve as the basis for your library’s strategic plan and to help you manage change so that it occurs a little at a time.
How Can I Serve You
Lieutenant General Van Antwerp, the current Chief of Engineers, has encouraged all of us in the Corps of Engineers to focus on the “service” aspects of our jobs. Whether we think about this in the context of civil service, public service, or customer service, the result is the same—making our own needs a secondary priority to those of our customers, whether they are internal to our organization, in another organization, or a member of the citizenry at large.
When I think about service in the context of change, I believe that the best way that I can serve others, particularly my library customers, is by being a change agent. By encouraging, promoting, and adopting change within my library, I help my library to be responsive to the organizations in which I work and adaptive to the customers’ needs and preferences. I know that the customers’ expectations are always increasing, so I feel it is important to be always on the lookout for small ways that we can change to improve their experience interacting with us or to serve them in new and pleasantly unexpected ways.
Structured programs like scenario planning or strategic planning help us to develop a shared vision for the future within our libraries. Nature tells us that small steps toward change are easiest and most sustainable, while experience shows us that change happens unevenly and must be managed. Ultimately, though, change is a personal decision that each one of us makes. Mine is to embrace change and to constantly strive to make my library a greater service and better value for my customers and my organization.
