 Now, without any further delay, it gives me an immense pleasure and a real sense of privilege to introduce Matthias Mann Utechem for this first keynote. Matthias is the university librarian at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. After his PhD in philosophy, he worked for 12 years at the National Library in various positions. And from 2013 to 2022, he was the director of the library at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His main interests are digitization and open scholarship and how these two trends affect the role of libraries. And today's talk from Matthias will be about leadership, which is something that is so important in the kind of uncertain, volatile world which we are living in, while also recognizing that a lot of library leadership is about values. So I'm really, really glad that Matthias is here with us, is taking this opportunity to take us through his leadership journey, and we are extremely excited. Thank you so much for your time. We'll hand over to Matthias, Matthias, your session now. Good morning, and thank you, Masutes, for this generous introduction. And thanks to ROUK for having me here. It's such a great honor to deliver this keynote for this conference on leadership. Admittedly, actually, I didn't see myself as a person to give this keynote about leadership for this excellent group of librarians. There's so many people in the audience I've called upon for help or advice. So I thought, who am I to present this keynote? And at the same time, I thought, well, who am I not to? Because it's very helpful to share ideas, have a dialogue with each other, and also share my lessons learned. So that's what I intend to do for the next 45 minutes. And we will leave some time for Q&A. So if you allow me, I'll start sharing my screen. So there you are. You should be able to see it right now. It's about opening up from the inside, about open science, leadership, and where I tend to err. And we're quite used to the concept of open science or open scholarship. But while we're working on it, and at Utrecht University, we do a lot in open science. I also started wondering how open are our library organizations actually? Can we succeed in bringing forward open science if we don't practice it within our own library organizations? So actually, this is not a talk about a straight result or a straight journey which I planned ahead. I take a leave from my own book. I open up as well. I'll just share my journey, successes I have, but also where I tend to err. And I'm looking forward to do this with you. And also, I hope actually that this is also a learning opportunity for me, because we amongst librarians and we more or less face the same challenges. So what I'm going to do in the next 45 minutes, I'll kick off with some definitions about libraries and leadership. Because these two concepts can be quite problematic in itself. Then I'll continue with my personal journey towards a gold-driven organization. Three things I love about working in a gold-driven library. And also, I will finish with where I tend to err. So that's the idea. Please feel free to share your ideas, comments, or anything you like in the chat and put your questions in the Q&A. So there we are, about leadership. There are lots of definitions about leadership. And this is one I compiled from several of them. There are even articles providing overviews with definitions of leadership. Most of them derive from a military context. But for me, leadership is a situation in which someone leads and others follow to achieve purpose within a given context. And this is quite a broad definition. And well, usually, leadership is compared with animal life. And I chose three examples. Usually, we tend to associate leadership with hierarchy. So the direct library director being in the lead, like a lion roaring and showing force. It's a kind of leadership that's very valuable. It's not the kind of leadership I'd like to discuss today. A second kind of leadership would be like an elephant. Also, a very strong animal leading the herd. And I took this picture from a relief from the Bouga Boudour in Indonesia. And what I particularly like about this picture is it also shows inclusivity because the elephant is in front. But we also see the beautiful birds on top of it. We see the deer, which is very fast. But right down at the tail of the elephant, there's also a piglet, which is a slower animal. And the elephant makes sure that everybody can catch on. It's also a way of looking at leadership. And the one I really like is about the school of fish. It's also a situation in which someone needs and others follow. But it's not exactly clear which one is the leader and which ones are following. And it changes all the time. And that's a concept I find really interesting. And I think it might be helpful to look at it this way in libraries. So that doesn't necessarily mean that the director should be the fish in front. In the school of fish, there is no fish in front. They're all going on all kinds of directions. But as a whole, they move more or less in the same direction. So depending on which picture you like, hierarchy is connected to someone or to the context. And I tend to connect hierarchy to a contextual factor. So that's about leadership. Then about open science, you know this definition. I took it from the Forster project. Open science is the movement to make scientific research data and dissemination accessible to all levels of an inquiring society. And what I really like about this definition is the movement. It is a movement. It is a direction. A direction of a school of fish, you may say. It gives the purpose I mentioned in the definition about leadership. It's a direction we're heading to. But still, there are lots of ways to do so. And then about libraries. This is a picture I took from Utah University Library. Rest assured, it's the only picture of my library. I'll include it in this presentation, but we can't do it out. And most people think of libraries as a building where you go to read books and journals, newspapers. But actually, nowadays, in my opinion, a library is an organization that stimulates and supports knowledge transactions. If I look at our library statistics, over 99% of consultations is in digital form. It's several millions, opposed to 40,000 loans, on average, each year. So actually, I don't think you can say we are a hybrid library. I think we are now a digital library with a physical presence. So the key thing we focus on are knowledge transactions. And that's the concept I'd like to dig into. So about knowledge transactions, the funny thing is at the start of this century, most Nobel prizes in field of economy went to scientists who described information transactions or knowledge transactions. And I particularly like this one by Joseph Stiklid. Markets for knowledge and information depends critically on reputation, repeated interactions, and on trust. And this is really important if we relate it to our definition of open science. All levels of an inquiry in society implies that we trust people to do the right thing with information we share with them. We share with everybody. Even large commercial publishers can use our data because it's there. It's open for everyone to use. So we are in this information market. And actually, we have a very good position because the reputation of libraries is excellent. We trust worthy. We are reliable. Repeated interactions is also a good thing for us, especially for a research library, because we have our own academic community around us and on trust. And this trust will get back into this presentation several times. I included a link to the paper in which he's put forward these ideas. And it's an obscure university. And there you see that not everything is in open access yet. He delivered this paper in London in 1990. And he was at the World Bank at the time. But the World Bank doesn't have it on their website as a publication, which is unfortunate. So lots of things to do in open access, but now more about leadership. So I'd like to kick off with these definitions. And it helps you to interpret my personal journey towards a Goldriff organization. And I included this picture, which shows the evolution of organizations. And I must say, I don't believe that it's a gross scenario. There can be many kinds of organizations. And I don't think one is better than the other. It all depends on the purpose you have. And at least in your draft, for us now, the purpose is open science. And actually, that triggered me to rethink our library organization. So the first one, when I entered the library world about 20 years ago, all libraries were task-driven. And you saw missions like the library managers' collections, provide access to content, provides related products and services. Actually, the mission was a listing of what we do as librarians. And there are many benefits in it. If you organize your library this way, it will be very reliable. You get robust services. No matter what's happening at the outside world, you will deliver. Because there's no way that anything can influence your library processes, which can be a very good thing. Last summer, I was down on a cold mine in Flanders. And there are strict regulations down there. If you shut the door, people might die down there. So you need to be very reliable, very robust. No flexibility at all, because that's rather dangerous. But the downside is it's quite inflexible. It's inward-looking. And if there's lots of things happening around you in the outside world, like it's happening now, it might not be the model that suits you best. Still nowadays, I see many traces of this way of working in many libraries, also in my own. So when I became a library manager, actually, the big thing, and I went to training courses and seminars, we should be result-driven. And we saw missions like, we provide the best possible services, et cetera, et cetera. And there's certain benefits in it. It's really efficient, and you will deliver results. And actually, this was how I was trained to be a library manager. And it brought quite good things. In my former library in Waterdam, when I started, we had several big projects. We had to replace the library system. We had to renovate the building. There was no way where we could do it is without this result-driven approach. The builder won't accept it when you're work-task driven and say, well, we're going to hand over the keys a week later, because, well, it's our process. Of course not. You have to deliver on time what you agreed on. And there are very good things in it. And we replaced the library system. We managed to renovate the library. It's a beautiful building. Please go to Waterdam if you have the opportunity. But at the same time, after a few years, I noticed that my staff didn't like it. We had meetings in which we celebrated our successes. I gave bonuses, not necessarily money, but also vouchers to have dinner with your team or books. But people felt a bit awkward when they were rewarded for being successful in their projects. I heard many times, well, I just did my job. And I had the feeling that, well, if I would continue this way, this result-driven way, I somehow would drive the soul out of my library organization. It would result in lower staff commitment, actually, then more commitment. And this would be less effective in the long run. So at that point, I realized that people don't work at the library for bonuses. They work at the library because they love to be a librarian. They want to be useful. They want to do something useful. They want to do something meaningful for society. Actually, that's the reason why I work in the library. I strongly believe that libraries contribute to a better society because, for a well-functioned democracy, you need well-informed people. And that's what we do, sharing information. So actually, that's my motivation to be a librarian. And I notice, actually, wherever you go, all over the world, the way people put it, perspective may differ. But more or less, this passion to contribute to society, that's everywhere. And then I realized that I might be on the wrong track of it, this result-driven approach. And we got the entire toolbox. We got Lean, we got Six Sigma, we got Prince II, we got Agile, we got Scrum, wow, wonderful. And these are very useful tools. But these are just tools. And tools don't create passion. And then I realized that, actually, what I learned in all my management courses was how to motivate people, how to motivate staff, how to convince them, how to stimulate change. And actually, I realized that the people in my library, my colleagues, they were already motivated. Actually, my job is not to spoil it. And then I realized that I didn't know any organizational model that works from this perspective. All models I knew, task-driven, result-driven, they're based on extrinsic motivations. In a task-driven model, you have checks and balances. You check everything you do. And when there's a mistake, you have reworked, you check again. In this result-driven model, you have the carrots and sticks. But actually, I was looking for a model in which people are already motivated and just get the opportunity to make themselves useful. And then I read the book and actually dealt with this issue. With respect to what I do, reinventing organizations, I can really recommend it. It's not an easy read. But it was exactly about this issue. And then I thought, well, how would a goal-driven organization look like? And I took on this slide the mission we have at Utrecht University. It's to promote and innovate the sharing of scholarly knowledge. And that really appeals to me, the sharing of scholarly knowledge. That's what we do, because we think it's useful in itself. And all my colleagues think it's useful in itself. And that's why I put this picture next to it. It's from a graphic novel by Mobius. And it says, well, I've been on this long journey. And it's about the balance between the mind and heart, what matters, before all results. And that's what I really like about this goal-driven organization. It's about a higher purpose. And if you think back about this definition of leadership, that someone needs and others follow to achieve purpose, it really makes sense. It's about purpose. So actually, my job is to keep this purpose clear as a librarian. And all my colleagues can define their own results within this purpose. And it can be many of them. And then we can be like this school of fish. And someone takes the lead if they have a good idea, and others go follow. So sometimes I will take the lead. Sometimes I will follow. It isn't connected to hierarchy. And actually, what would really determine which role you take is how you can use your talents. So that's what I'd like to touch on now. Three things I love about working in a goal-driven library, because that's what we can become if we want to. And I repeat, there's no model that's better than others. It's just that this goal-driven library appeals to me most because it's really connected to the purpose of being a librarian. And actually, that's also why I moved to Utrecht. I spent nine years in Rotterdam as a university librarian. And after nine years, I thought, well, I should move on. Do something else. And then I realized I don't want to do something else. Actually, I love being a university librarian. It makes sense what I do. I love my colleagues. I love working in libraries, which, if I put this illustration from Neil Gariman, it's a place of safety. It's a place with librarians in it that says it all. So when this position in Utrecht became available, I realized, well, I don't want to do something else. I'll move to Utrecht and do similar things in a different place. Because it's good for us to move on now and then. But if you really love what you do, that's perfect. And that's what the next slide is about. I love working in a library because I really believe we can make a difference because access to information is a precondition for a well-functioning democracy. And that's a big thing. Yes, it is indeed. It really matters what we do. It really matters that we're in this meeting having this talk because we can really make a difference as librarians. I connected to several models. Hey, you see the golden circle from Sineq. Why, how, what? You should start with the why. There's a beautiful TED talk on YouTube. Please check it if you haven't seen it already. More recently, John Srelichkin, the YCAFE, wonderful story about a man who's lost and then ends up in a cafe, a typical American diner. And gets quite challenging questions. Why are you here? Do you fear death? Are you satisfied? Well, these are big questions. And it's a way of looking at things, especially among my younger staff. I noticed the movement, which they call fire, but it strives to be financial independence as soon as possible so they can retire early. And it really made me sad, actually, because there's some strange contradiction between the person you are at work trying to earn as much money as possible and then retires that you can do things you really like, which is such a waste of time because it takes many years to get this amount of money. Why don't you start right away with doing things you like? For me, doing things I like is going to work in my library. I really love being a librarian. And the next thing, the next pillar for this goal-driven organization besides the purpose is autonomy or self-management. I strongly believe, and we've got this acronym, FUKA, volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, complex, hierarchy cannot cope really well with complexity, I think. If you expect your library director to know everything and take every decision, well, it's very likely things will go quite badly because this person can't know everything and the world is far too complex for one person to oversee it all, possibly even for your entire library organization. So the whole idea of being this lion roaring and taking decisions, trying to keep to the path, I don't think there are any paths. Arguably, some libraries thought that, well, maybe we should change the organization and become a matrix organization where we have this vertical lines and then we tend to call silos and we don't like them, but maybe we should have programs as horizontal things in between. Possibly, I trust that there are places where it works out well. At the same time, in many cases, I see that we're just adding an extra layer of hierarchy and it becomes even more complex. And the idea of self-management autonomy is not to make everyone equally powerful like a communist utopia, but its idea is to make everyone fully powerful so they can exercise their own talents to the max. And this will differ among people, but at least everybody can contribute. So that's something I'm working on right now in Utrecht is questions like, how do we make decisions together if it's not me? And I really do my utmost to make as little decisions as possible. And then some questions for you. If you have an open strategy, how much of the information in your organization is truly open? Because if you want people to take on responsibility, they should have the opportunity. And one thing they need is access to information. So let's start with basic things like, do you have real-time access to each other's agenda? Do you have the mobile number of your colleagues? Can you easily reach them? Next step could be, can each colleague access documents of the management team? Real-time. And can each colleague get access to the resources needed to act? And the next question could be, are you happy that I didn't use a mentor meter right now? Because I would love to see your faces right now, which I can't. And I'd love to hear your answers I don't know many organizations that say yes to all these questions. Why is that? Would it hurt if someone would get access to documents of the management team before the meeting? And not only have reading rights, but also be able to edit them so people can include comments, which will probably help the discussion. And it would be really great if all colleagues would have access because if they have a plan, then they have the resources to act. And maybe you would ask, oh, this could go entirely wrong. If everybody starts to spend money, we'll go into the dogs because we don't have any overview. We don't keep to estimates. I don't think so. Their trust comes in. Librarians are trustworthy people and they're really committed to doing something that they can't do. They're really committed to doing something useful to society. They're really committed to spending public money well. Actually, I gave the try-out to them. All librarians, regardless your tasks or your job, had the mandate to spend up to 10,000 euros without any consultation. And trust me, they didn't do this every day. But the result was when someone called a library or professor in a European project and then needed a specific journal urgently, any staff member could decide right on the spot how to help this colleague. It was wonderful. Our customer satisfaction went sky-high because people knew in the academic community, if you advance a librarian, this person will help you. And we didn't have any financial issue. On the contrary, people were very, very aware of the costs of things and took this into account when they made their decisions. So something to think about. But again, I won't start a man's meter, be assured. So these things, these two things I like about working in a library, and then about the third thing, and it's not connected to being a librarian. I hope it should be in any place. It's the practice of bringing your entire self to work. When you work in this way, it's about talent instead of tasks. And if that's the case, it's also about job crafting because the question is, how can you use your talents best? It's also about equity and inclusion because you give everyone the opportunity and the means to exercise the talents. It's also about inspiration and fun. And that's why I included this picture. It's me in the library where we turned the library into a volubisco. And here you see me in my corporate skirt on roller skates, which I'm not used to and you can tell by my face. I enjoyed it a lot. And we can have an entire another hour about talking about wholeness. But at least it's built on the concept of safe space and vulnerability. That there's an atmosphere where you share things and that you feel the freedom and opportunity and safety to do so. Like I'm doing with you right now, showing myself with a silly cap on roller skates. And then move on to my errors in management. But before I do so, I will summarize the impact for change management. The difference between result driven especially and gold driven because these two are sometimes mixed up. In a result driven organization, someone really changed the change. And then you have a freeze and freeze model. You have situation A, you unfreeze it, you change it, and you freeze back again. In a gold driven organization, there's continuous change. People can start new teams, they solve other teams. It's self-steering instead of hierarchical decision-making. People take on roles instead of tasks. And most important, you don't use key performance indicators to measure whether you're successful. But whether you're successful is a determined whether you live up to your standards, to your values. And then the top one, organization changes itself. That's the one I had the most difficulty with because I couldn't believe it. There's always someone changing something, I thought. But after a while, at least in Rotterdam, I saw it happening. We've been working with self-steering teams for several years. And at some point, people had made their own teams, changed other teams, stopped some teams we already had. And actually, the structure we had didn't look like our organization chart at all anymore. Actually, the organization had changed itself. It caused all kinds of trouble because we were used to communicate along the old lines and, well, lots of issues. And at some point, I raised my hand and say, hey, do you also recognize we've changed? And shouldn't we change our organization chart? Because it doesn't look like what we're actually doing right here. And it was a very interesting process because the change actually already had happened. And it was the change process involved us just changing the documents, which is entirely different from the organizations and the kind of change management I was used to. And I must admit, I couldn't believe that this could happen, but indeed it happened. So now where I tend to err, which is the most difficult part because I can put my errors on the slide, but I still can't avoid them all. And that's something that bothers me all the time. And I'll start with a course of knowledge. I've been working in this library world for 20 years now. So I think I know two things about libraries. And sometimes I assume that others have the same background knowledge as I have, which isn't the case, not only because they might not have been working in the library for so long, but even if they have, they have different knowledge. And this is really a curse and not a blessing because I'm a library director. And as soon as I say something, some people tend to interpret as a decision or as a wish or as a request they should fulfill, which isn't the case at all in my opinion, but it depends on how you look at leadership. And there are many people who don't look at leadership like it's a school of fish, but like a library leader being an elephant or a lion. And if that's your fuel and leadership and your library director ventilates an opinion, then easily the next step is to do what this person says. And I have the best intentions, of course, but things can go really wrong because there are so many things I don't know about libraries and it's a source for all kinds of miscommunications. So one of the things I did in Utrecht, at least to try to avoid this pitfall is ask every team to give me an introductory session for two hours. Just assign me a task I can learn in half an hour and which won't take a full week of rework after I've left. So that just can get to know people, learn what they do before I start building my own opinions. But still this cognitive bias, assuming that we have the same background, it's still one of my pitfalls. Another one is the another cognitive bias, is the halo effect, which is a tendency for positive impressions in one area to influence opinions in other areas. And it's also connected to this trust we discussed earlier. I trust people, I see them doing beautiful things every day and when I see them do so, I strongly believe they can do lots of other things that they have lots of other talents. And I still believe this is the case, but it doesn't mean that they know everything or that they are good at everything. And if you have a new clue that they just started working in the library and you know, probably know this model from her situational leadership, you start directing, giving clear assignments, support this person, take them by the hand and when they've learned to start coaching and you move on to supporting and delegating to their full-grown library professionals. But even library professionals who have been working at the library for a decade still need some time to learn new things, especially in this world that is rapidly changing. And if you have to learn some new things, oh, you get back to step one. What's the task you should do? And again, you will go through this whole cycle. And that's something I tend to forget because of this trust, because of this knowledge people already have. But if you don't recognize that you're all in a learning process, really all of us, my colleagues, me, then well, things might go wrong or you're less effective. So that's a pitfall I see in many libraries, especially in departments for academic services where we have librarians who are highly educated, some of PhDs, profound knowledge about library things, about research, but especially in how to deal with customers, for instance, we can improve. It's not a given talent everybody has, but others have this talent, so we might help each other. And then finally, consensus biases. And this is a tricky one. I tend to see my own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to the existing circumstances. And it's also something I learned in the course I did in philosophy. I always try to see a philosophy as something that makes sense. And when I take a decision, I always make the best decision, which doesn't necessarily mean it's a good decision, but at least in the moment itself, based on the information I have, it's the best I can do. And I realize, sometimes just a few hours later, that's not the right decision and I can improve. But in the moment itself, I do the best I can do and it applies to all of us. But at the same time, it might not be good enough because the frame I have, the way I look at the world is very, very specific. In the Netherlands, we have a book called The Seven Checkboxes, which is about diversity and inclusion. And I take all the boxes because I'm white, I'm male, my parents are highly educators. I speak Dutch with a neutral accent, which is the equivalent of Oxford Dutch. So I have so many favorable circumstances. The world looks like as if it's made for me and I don't feel any issues at all when I navigate through it. So sometimes I tend to forget that others might face issues and that what I see as appropriate isn't appropriate at all. And there's some difficulty in it because I can only look with my own eyes and I can only think with my own head. So the only way to escape from it is to start a dialogue, is to constantly check how other people see things what's appropriate to them and asking for help. And then the concept of leadership we started with kicks in because it's really, really helpful if you see leadership as being one fish in this entire school, then being the lion that has to know it all. So that's what I'd like to share with you. And I'm looking forward to the Q&A. Natas, thank you so much for that really wonderful but also very enlightening talk. I think what a fantastic reminder to really think about why we are here in the first place. What is the purpose, what motivates us and that common purpose and common goal. And also, I think what I found personally very inspirational is that journey from being a task-driven to results-driven to a goal-driven organization, recognizing that different organizations will be at different stages in that journey but also recognizing that even within the organization there might be different teams that will be at different stages of that journey as well. I think that was really, really positive. Sorry, I'm talking too much but another thing I really enjoyed in that conversation was recognition of what empowerment actually means. And again, I know I'm guilty of this about thinking about can we bring everyone equally empowered in that journey but actually within where they are, where they are in their own journey can we make them fully powerful is such an important point. So thank you. There has been a few things mentioned in the chat and a few questions that have arrived which I'll take with you. But as I'm expressing my thanks there are lots of thank you messages coming in the chat as I know people have really enjoyed this conversation and this wonderful talk. So if I may take us to a few set of questions. I think they are from different parts of your talk so I will link it back to some of the different aspects that you were talking about. But I think one of them is from Siobhan who is actually a Utrecht alumna and also wrote to them locals which is expressing that fantastic connection as well and absolutely enjoyed listening to you. I think there is a recognition that everyone recognized your passion for making a difference for open knowledge and for facilitating conversations around that. But how do you balance that with the dangers of vocational law? How can we as a librarian stay true to our purpose and stay passionate while avoiding burnout and other dangers of vocational law in terms of our professional well-being and stability and equity of the services that you provide? Yeah, that's a very good question. How do you balance your drive to do something good and also take care of the well-being of your colleagues? And I think that's why the whole concept of wholeness is very important because if you can take your entire self to work, you can show the situation you're in. Sometimes you're full of energy and it can also vary in different stages in life when you just start at your job with full of energy and you have lots of time to do things with your face down times in your work. A personal example, some eight years ago I went through a divorce and I couldn't deliver as a library director at least not to the standard I'd like to and most likely not to the standards of my colleagues. And it meant so much to me that I just go to work and say, hey, this is the case. Could you please help me? And there were other colleagues who were just in a booming phase and they said, yes, sure. I'd like to take on lots more responsibilities. I can help you. And if I would have been this leader thinking that I should do it all by myself, it would have an awful time and it would have been quite awkward for my colleagues as well. So that's also where job crafting kicks in. It really depends on your talents but also on your personal circumstances and we face the good times and bad times, all of us. And we can just help each other if we can have the dialogue about it. That's really important, just having open conversations about it, open conversations about our libraries or our librarians inherently doing the right things. I think there was a fantastic article once I wrote or read about vocational law and librarianship. The lies we tell ourselves can't remember the author's name. But again, that was really challenging. Some of these norms. So it's great to have views that dialogue can really help balance things out. If I may ask a connected question now, which is from another user, which is again thanking you for your really fantastic talk. They're also talking about how their users talk about the library as well. So they're saying that when they survey their users, quite often they prioritize getting the basics right, having the library that's got its basics right. And how do you balance that community desire to focus on delivering effective services first, but also allowing the organization to be flexible and goal-oriented and not task-oriented? Yeah, it's a very good question. How do you align your goals with these from your users to get the basics right? Well, actually, I don't feel there's a strong opposition between these two, because most librarians really want to support their users and they want to get the basics right too. And it's not that we are a flexible organization discussing goals all the time. It's like a compass you have invisible in your hand and you know where to go. And actually, it also helps you to connect to users to hear what they mean by getting the basics right, because it sounds quite easy, but when you start the conversation, it turns out that everyone has quite different basics. And something I'd like to add, a library or any organization is not always entirely goal-driven or entirely result-oriented. Also in this goal-driven library, at least in my catalog department, if you enter the department and you walk on the floor, you don't see any difference between this department and a catalog department in a task-driven organization. But there's a crucial difference. The people in my department chose to work this way themselves instead of that was imposed on them. And they love to work task-driven, which is fine by me. And I think, again, that balance between the libraries are not a homogenous entity, there will be different aspects of teams and different aspects of work we do, but we cannot be just one, we cannot be just task-oriented, we cannot be just result-oriented, or we cannot be just goals-oriented because it's a matter of that balancing of reliability, but also adding those layers of flexibility. And a lot of that is about people, as you were talking, and I'm going to combine a couple of questions into a single question for you to consider and share your thoughts on. So this is about library staff and their hidden skills and recognizing their talent, but also bringing them on board with the journey towards being a goal-oriented organization. How can people be more aware of those hidden skills? And how can people bring those colleagues in that journey? And how do you bring particularly junior colleagues in this journey with you who are more used to task-driven activities? Yeah, yeah, how do you bring everybody on board? Well, actually it already starts with your onboarding process, it already starts with your recruiting process. When I was hired as a library director, actually it was quite a traditional procedure. There was this job vacancy and then you can apply and then you have a meeting and several meetings in which a large group of people in front of you starts asking questions and you answer. And at the end of the conversation, they call the conversation, you can also ask some questions. Well, at least it was the case when I was hired as a librarian. It doesn't need to be this way. For instance, in this job profile, you can focus on the talents you want someone to bring rather than the tasks that need to be performed. One thing I really liked, at least in Rotterdam, is that we hired anonymously. So we didn't want to see any names, pictures, age, gender, whatever. Because before it's irrelevant because it matters what talent you bring to the library. And if these are useful, well, you can do anything you like because you will contribute to the common cause. So that's where it starts. And then we had this first interview where we checked, do you have the talents you described in your application? And the second conversation was led by the applicant. Checking, is this an organization where I can exercise my talents, where I want to be? And before the invitation for the second interview, an applicant would get access to all information this person wanted or needed, which could be a visit to the library, which could be spent an afternoon with future colleagues, et cetera. Because we want to know the person and not robots performing some tasks. And also as a library director, I play a role in the process because once someone is on board, I like to make the acquaintance, tell about the purpose, tell about the strategy. It's something you have to repeat all the time. It's already there and we all feel it, but it really helps to say it quite often. Yeah, I think that's absolutely fantastic advice there as well. Because quite often you forget that the process of a dialogue starts even before really someone has started with the organization and all the way from recruitment processes to onboarding to very clearly expressing what the culture and strategy and the direction is. So repetition is very important in really building that sense of consistency. Which actually takes me to another question that's come through, which is about how much choice do we have in these matters? So let me elaborate a bit more. So for example, most of our libraries are part of larger institutions or larger organizations. And the institutional culture or the institutional view of leadership might be quite different from what the library might be trying to do. So how can one manage that interface between the library culture, particularly in your situation, the library culture you're trying to create, and the wider institutional culture. Do you have any advice on how that interface can be managed more effectively? Well, I'll give it a try. And we all recognize the situation that you have a different culture within your library than you might have in other departments or other divisions in your university. And still you need to work together regardless of the kind of organization you are. And actually you can even face it in your own organization. Maybe you're not a library director. If you are, it's quite easy because you can make the first move in your library. But if you're not, if you're a team lead somewhere in the library, how do you make the change then? Because then you'll face other departments who are working differently. And of course, I realize we have collective labor agreements, et cetera, and we should stick to the book. But at the same time, you can easily create some room to maneuver. And it may be smaller, it may be larger, but you can start somewhere. It can be, for instance, starting with a tiny thing of wholeness. When you have your standard, just have a check in how you're doing. Which is a very, very effective question. And you can ask it in any context. But it's a really, really good start. So they're all kinds of difficulties when it grows because people get more aware of it. And they feel they have to position themselves somehow. And to get back to your question, how does this relate to other parts of the university? Well, I've never seen a situation where a unit is punished because it performs really well. And I strongly believe if you exercise your talents, you start performing better. So it's not very likely that the university board will say, hey, what are you doing? This is not according to the book. Please start on the performing. That's really helpful. And also I think it goes back to the theme of this conference about partners and pioneers. And I personally generally believe that we can be pioneers in shifting the institutional culture rather than feeling that we cannot do anything because the institutional culture is being imposed on us. So I think there is huge potential of that leadership and bravery that comes with that. There have been a couple of comments and a question on this note, which is about job crafting and job carving. And colleagues are wondering whether you can share some of your thoughts about how you managed that, how you did that, or whether you have any thoughts about that process in general. Yeah, but it's a big thing, complex of things. You can have many definitions of it. But let's start small. I think in many libraries, we have some kinds of appraisal interviews. And I always hope that these conversations will be about the future rather than the past because we can't change the past. We can shift the future. So a very effective question would be, what do you like to do? What energizes you? And what useful contribution could you make to a purpose? And someone, it can start small, participate in a project, for instance. So that you can exercise your talent or try to learn something new. And if you're successful in the next step, maybe you can lead the next project or maybe you don't want to lead anything and you're a specialist and you can contact colleagues from other libraries in your region or in your country or internationally. So it's about diversifying tasks. It's about expanding your network. And these are two steps that might be really helpful. And at some point, I realize we have labor agreements, et cetera, at some point, at some point you need a new doc description. And if there's no opportunity within your library, then perhaps your manager can support you to move on. I think that last point actually links really nicely into part of the question, which is how do you do that without being taken advantage of or without being compensated for? And I think it's about recognizing when you've reached a point where you've diversified your skill sets, but actually it's at a different level or a different grade than having those conversations. Absolutely is critical. There's one question that I have and then I'll ask one very final question to finish this session. And apologies if this is a very broad question, but I was just wondering about what would success look like for you in three years' time it has? What would you like to see in the library? What would success feel like? Yeah, for me, success would be that we share this passion about being a librarian, that people are feel safe and happy to work at this library because I really believe that if we have this situation, our customers will be happy too. And you can never have happier customers than the happiness of your colleagues. So, that's something I love and I'll trust we'll get there. I think that's such a fantastic response and it goes back to your point about having fun and enjoyment in the library as well. Which is a fantastic way to ask the last question, which is how did you create a roller disco in your library without causing a heart attack to the building's department or health and safety concerns? I think many, many people are really excited and intrigued by that question. Yeah, well we had to renovate the building I mentioned in my presentation. So, we did it just before we handed over the building to the builders. Okay, that's fantastic. I think I know my staff have taken lots of inspiration from that and the best thing is about, let's do some roller disco skating in the library. So, I watch this space now basically. Mathias, I just want to say huge thank you. Absolutely brilliant talk, lots of food for thought in there, lots of sources of inspiration. And thank you for your openness or sharing your journey. And as you highlighted for sharing your vulnerability, that is so critical in leadership and in allowing more leadership openness and transparency to develop. What a fantastic start to this conference. I know everyone's really enjoyed this session and this conversation. And I know this wouldn't be the end of it. I know this will just open up so many further conversations throughout this conference. So, thank you really, genuinely and honestly it's been a real inspiration and a real privilege.