 Hi everyone and welcome on this Thursday evening for myself and I think for many of you to the leadership and management program advisory committees spring offering for the data life of leader series and tonight we have members of our program advisory committee to talk about the topic of gain changer so transformational planning perspectives this was obviously a topic I think that many of you can probably guess that we came to because of the the different changes that have been happening in the world right now and the different massive transformations that all information organizations have been going through and so we wanted to get some expert perspectives on this and now tonight we have just a brief overview of what we're going to be talking about we have presentations from our five pack members and then at the end of the presentations we'll have time all of the presentations will have time for questions and we ask that you use the chat function in zoom or raise your hand and myself or my co-host Dr. Sue Allman will call on you. So just a quick introduction for all of our speakers our first speaker I want to make sure we're all on the same page our first speaker is Amanda Folk she is the assistant professor and head of teaching and learning at the Ohio State University library she will be followed by Dr. Moza Frazier Arno who is the director of parliamentary relations and planning office at the parliamentary budget officer for in Ontario Ottawa Ontario Canada then our colleague Anna Perna Dandue who is the library services manager at Santa Clara County library district will talk with us followed by Kelvin Watson who is the executive director of the Las Vegas Clark County library district and a current candidate for ALA president so if you are an ALA member we hope that you have voted for our friend Kelvin and then last but not least our we'll hear from Daphne Wood who is the director of planning and organizational development at the Vancouver Public Library in Vancouver Canada so now I'm going to turn it over to Amanda. Hi everyone I'm just starting my timer here to make sure that I keep myself on track thank you so much for the invitation to join this evening I'm really excited to hear from my other colleagues and learn from them as Debra mentioned my name is Amanda Folk I'm the head of teaching and learning at the Ohio State University Libraries so I'm a department head in a really large libraries organization Ohio State is one of the largest research universities in the country and so our library organization is commensurate with that to give you an idea of what's on my mind as I approach this topic of transformational planning as a department head I'm thinking specifically about the transformation that I'm going to need to make with my department as we move from the pandemic crisis into the endemic stage of the pandemic or some of us may call it post-covid as well this world in which we're all kind of living with COVID and we're moving from this time of crisis into what the next stage of our new normal looks like and I think all of us have been in crisis mode and crisis management mode for the past two years and now we're probably thinking about how to shift into change management and there are a few things that I think I've learned as a manager over the past two years that are going to be helpful to me as I manage a team that will most likely be hybrid from this point on so prior to the pandemic all of my team worked on site either four to five days a week so we had a shared office suite within the same library location we were really collegial we were known as a fun group everybody really enjoyed each other as people and of course also enjoyed working together to meet shared goals and so the pandemic was particularly hard for my unit because suddenly we were all isolated from one another and didn't have that daily connection that we once did and over the past year or so as we somewhat have transitioned into a new normal and many of us have moved back to onsite work a lot of my team has continued to work fully remotely from their home locations or has had a hybrid schedule so for example I'm in the office two days a week but I work from home three days a week and this has posed a variety of challenges for thinking about how we move forward as a team some things that I've been thinking a lot about our communication strategies and so over the past two years communication almost became more important than it has ever been and it was already a critical skill to be able to facilitate as a manager and so I found myself feeling like I was over communicating with my team a lot of the time over the past couple of years but this is something that I've learned that they really appreciate I think sharing information as I have it being transparent about what I know in terms of decision making or plans that the libraries or the university might have from moving forward and being transparent about what I don't know goes a really long way in helping to ease folks anxiety either in a time of crisis or also in a time of change a lot of times folks can be resistant to change for a variety of reasons but sometimes it's really fear of the unknown and not being sure what's going to happen next and how that's going to affect them so making sure that I'm sharing the most up-to-date information as soon as I have it and also being clear about what I don't know and what I think might happen in the future has been incredibly important for maintaining trust among my team and this has taken a variety of forms so I already had a department meeting scheduled every other week and we would get together and do a lot of sharing before I think we felt like we really needed to have a very structured agenda and sometimes that is helpful but also having department meetings that are really open and just allowing folks to raise questions or concerns that they have or share topics that they're really interested in so we have this we have a spirit of sharing among our team so it's not just me sharing out to them but us sharing with one another I maintained my regular meeting schedules with all of my direct reports of course as well and we quickly changed to having a Teams channel Teams was just coming to Ohio State as we were moving into the pandemic I wouldn't say we were slow to adopt but we didn't have a strong need for it before the COVID crisis hit but very quickly team members thought it would be helpful for us to have a channel where we could chat with one another and that could be informal teleworking chatter just to keep a connection strong or it could be formal information sharing including sharing documents another thing that we implemented too was an informal lunch gathering for folks so they can continue to connect with the relationships that they had with their colleagues even if we weren't necessarily able to see each other face to face so potlucks were really popular in my department prior to the pandemic and just being able to share a lunch a couple of times a week and catch up with what's happening in one another's lives became a really important mechanism for maintaining a team spirit and collegiality in a hybrid work environment the other thing I did too was I split my department into two separate teams one based on student success and one based on supporting instruction across the university so that we had a very formal way to continue sharing information that we might have shared very informally in our department spaces prior to the pandemic so there was a lot of communication that happens informal when you just see each other you think oh hey Jane I forgot to tell you I was in this meeting yesterday and this topic came up and I thought it might be something that you're interested in we do do some of that by email but of course the email volume can get quite large so we have created a formal space for us to do some of that informal information sharing and making sure that we're all on the same page and not duplicating efforts among our team environment one final thing that I'll say because I see that I am getting close to time here is even though we are kind of shifting into this new normal phase and kind of transforming the work that we're doing most likely in hybrid environments I think it's really important to recognize that the past two years have been traumatic in many ways for almost all of us and so being patient with ourselves and with our team members and recognizing that a lot of us are working through a lot of difficult emotions over the past two years and moving into the future as we think about the current war situation in Europe and the fact that COVID has not gone away I think we do need to keep that in mind too as we're working with our colleagues in thinking about what the future of our libraries looks like and with that I will pass the microphone to my next colleague. Thank you so much Amanda so up next is Anna Perna so Anna Perna on to you. Hello everyone I would like to share my screen as I have a couple of slides I hope that's working and thank you for the opportunity thank you for having me here and I'm very happy to be here and I'm happy to be sharing the good work that we are doing at the Santa Clara County system like everyone else we have faced numerous challenges in the past couple of years and I think when we started work in the very beginning in early 2001 after we closed we just sent people home and then we slowly started planning our activities bringing people back into work and looking at how things are working what our priorities and all that we had come up with a few iterations of goals for ourselves as a library and this is one iteration of it the others prior to this were not so I thought would take a lot of time so I don't have them here but building our goals we had divided them into different buckets and put them like this for staff development website and online library we concentrated on building some doing some building projects and all that so just going a little further into some of these staff development and support it was really important for us when we were in this COVID time to make sure that staff was okay connected and knew what they had to do during that time and a lot of our staff members were also deployed as disasters in this work so we were working with a very small staff and we had some retirements and staff moving movement internally within our organization so we were working with a slim staff and in spite of that our staff was flexible adaptable and creatively use their time the limited resources that we had to come up with services for our patrons so we took that as an opportunity to build our student portal which is another website that we have created for our local schools where students don't have to come into the library website to use the library but they can go into the student portal from their own website and just access the educational materials they need and then check out items online or whatever they need do their business and then leave the site so they were not connected with the main site but just could use the student portal site so during this time we also improved our online cards online cards renewal process and we worked on few other online projects and all that and we took this as an opportunity to build some of our to move some of our building projects forward so our Campbell library had just passed a measure and so that's in the works now it's still working but me at that time I was working at the Saratoga public library I took that as an opportunity we changed our carpets make sure we got the lighting project done and got some projects done during that time so we could use that time before the patrons came in and for patrons in order to support and give them access we put in free wi-fi access in our parking lot to ensure that they connect with the external world have access to the internet and during this time we also worked and opened our libraries as cooling centers heating centers clean air centers and all that so our patrons and their pets had a space to go to in their time of we also developed some state uh district-wide programs like the online story time project which was essential for our patrons they were not getting out but we were trying to reach them via our facebook page using our zoom accounts just like everyone else so some of those programs we did develop and after this we completed most of our programs if you look at this slide the purple ones were what the ones we were planning and once we had completed this iteration we moved into our next commitments which was this we came up with this was in summer of last year since we wanted to make sure that we had some focus and we were working towards some common goals and all that this is what we had come up with these were the five spokes in the wheel that we wanted to concentrate on celebrate and support reading and learning as a part of this we have created a kinder readiness program for our young ones that are going into kindergarten who didn't actually have that exposure or lack that kind of socialization with people during these past two years so we're trying to help those kids using our kinder readiness program and then besides that we also have the summer we have the summer reading last year the distinguished author series we did bring in a few distinguished authors to talk to our patrons and we had about 2000 people come to those programs because they were not heading out anyway and they needed outlets so these were some things that we provided to our community and in providing an inclusive extraordinary and library experience we made sure that we expanded our hours slowly so right now we are open full hours which is we are a seven-day operation and everything is open all our libraries are open pre-pandemic hours right now at this time and we are getting a staff back from the SW work so we are able to provide services like in the past and besides that we are also getting some resources from the state library which we are using to our advantage to provide more services and in order to keep the staff engaged we have started some programs which there was a wellness center wellness corner that we created for our staff on our SharePoint page which is mainly our intranet site where people can go share things with others like recipes or what they've been doing there's an activity that's built in every week just to improve staff engagement and make sure everybody feels connected so that was one initiative that was started then it's still going strong working very well for us and we hope to see it last a long time into the future and then embracing new technologies we are trying to do some technology projects at this time to make sure that we get those done so we can move into the future into the after Covid time with a full full proof system well improved a good system to move forward with we are updating our AMHS system at this time you're trying to bring in new technologies our libraries all have laptop wending machines for our patrons for the people that really need them so that is another initiative that we did take up during this time and completed and we're also trying to bring build strong community partnerships we have community resource spaces we're trying to provide staff for DSW disaster service work help to our community members and all that so they could get the help they needed at the vaccination centers and all that and I see that my time is up and I wanted to just let you know some of the tell you about some of the initiatives that we have started completed and we are moving into the future now so I forgot to tell you the beginning of this time we they're coming to the end of our strategic plan so as we couldn't we didn't have anything then we came up with these initiatives and this is how we had moved forward and now we have a group that we are working with in order to come up with our strategic plan for the next few years so moving out of this Covid time we are hoping we are more we're trying to get a focused and getting to the process in a thoughtful way so we can do our job even better and make sure we provide good services to our patrons so I think I've come to the end of my presentation and I think my time is up too thank you so much Anna Perna that was that was really wonderful and there was a request for your slides in the chat in case you missed that and my sincere apologies to Melissa who I totally skipped over in our in the order but so I hopefully she will forgive me and speak next about her her experiences here so here is Melissa Frazier Arnaud. Thanks for the introduction Deborah no problem at all I'm I'm enjoying listening to everyone's experiences here so I don't mind going before or after anyone else so I'm going to take a little bit of a different angle in my in my presentation and talk about some of the the foundational work that we can do is as unit leaders as team leaders or as individual employees and kind of preparing and setting the groundwork for for being ready for change we've seen so much change in the last couple of years and some of us really it's it's not the magnitude has been different dealing with dealing with a pandemic but for many of us it's dealing with change hasn't been some something that's new we're working in environments where our our clients are constantly asking for different things our focuses are are changing the subjects we deal with are changing so we really we have to be change ready all the time and this is something that you that you can do even if you're not at the senior executive levels of an organization this is something that individual team leaders and and individual contributors can do to help to prepare an organization to be to be change ready and to adapt to to evolving environments so the first the first thing that you as as an individual within a library or another organization or you as a team leader can do is is really get to know what your organization's main mission is what what is the main service purpose that you serve what is your your your organization's true goal is once you know that mission that will really inform all the services that you're providing and that mission is separate from your strategic plan your strategies are going to change they're going to change every five years every two years every one year maybe even even even less time than that as we as we come to to to shorter time frames for our planning but once you know that that mission you find if you figure out your true north then you're able to really use that as the foundation for all of your other actions and you as an individual employee as a manager you it may not be it may not be something that's communicated every day but it's something that you need to find out and use that to guide your planning and that way you can contribute and show what your what your work does that that feeds into that central plan and and additionally once you get into the strategy level you have a role as a team leader and this individual contributor in in helping to guide what that strategy can be and how ready your team is and what your clients here what your what your patrons what your users are saying about the plan so so understand that main that main focus and that will drive all of the all of the team's work so for your team itself when you're contributing to that plan your first your first major action especially during difficult times like this is to understand where your team is at I absolutely agree with what Amanda was saying that communication is key sharing with your team what's come from the what's come from senior management but also sharing up with with senior management how your team is doing how much capacity they have for new change projects you know how much capacity they have for for everyday operational work we've certainly seen that things have been slower to it's been slower to get things done during the pandemic we've it's we haven't been able to just walk down the hall and ask a question to a colleague we're now you know we're now dealing with more asynchronous communications we're dealing with supply chains that are a little bit a little bit more challenging so so communicating that is really going to be key and the other the other element I would really advise is get to know what's going on outside of your own unit if you're in a large organization where where the work is very specialized it can be very easy to focus in on on just your team's work and you're not getting the full picture I I tend to be a process person of my teams I like to look at the full process from the point where where the works you know the work request comes in to the point where it's delivered to your client so encourage your encourage your team members to look at to talk to people around the organization find out what's going on with them find out what their pain points are during during these difficult times to see if there are any places where you can improve the flow of of of your processes to be to be to be more flexible or to be faster or to to work around issues that you're finding because of because of the challenges of the the external environment and these can be really small changes can be very powerful in in the team where I'm working now we we've been done things like simple template changes which might not seem like a big deal doing a simple change share template but we found changing one field in the template allowed us to time our work differently allowed us to get things done faster at times that weren't as as busy in our in our process flow than they would have been otherwise so a simple you know a simple one one column you know one row change in it in a template can actually save your team hours of work during during high pressure moments so that knowing that process and and being willing to play with your process as well is is is critical in in being ready during these during these times of change and that comes from and that that that really your your you as a manager are going to be setting the tone for whether your team is is is going to be bringing you change ideas or not always being welcome to you know allow your changes to come up as a manager sometimes you might feel pressured to have the answers I certainly know that I don't I don't always have the best answers in my team I look to I look to my to my to my staff to see what ideas they have to bring forward and that's any member of the staff might have an excellent idea from from your new students to your to your you know 20 30 year veterans in the team we're all going to be excellent contributors certainly people come with different backgrounds and different expertise which is it's happened throughout that that ideas have come up from the team that we've that we've brought forward that we've played with and tried I find sometimes times like this are a great time for small pilots if you're looking to try something new with with the way you deliver if you're looking at you know again if you're looking at your process you're thinking about your process differently a small change here or there might have a make a big impact and if you're just doing it as a pilot if it doesn't work out then you know then you've got some lessons learned and you can take that as an opportunity to learn rather than rather than you know a failing of any kind so these are these are key to to kind of contributing to that that that flexibility if you're looking at ways in which you can get your employees to feel comfortable with change and comfortable with bringing ideas forward certainly in addition to that that creating that environment as a manager where there's that openness to discussion there's a looking at processes of looking around the organization there's also some learning that you can promote of course in this program we are the the leadership and management pack so yes we do we do have a great interest in in management education and there are great programs here at SJSU but the topics that you can look for either through formal education or for your own you know through your own reading and your own webinar use which this has never been a better time to watch webinars is topics like i'm certainly communication looking at you know formal change change management training that's something that's not just for managers your staff is your staff can look at learning those things i've worked with my team when you've got when you've got great highly skilled people with excellent ideas it's often not the not the plan not the strategy not the the approach or the tactic that they need training on but it's learning how to communicate and sell those ideas to management where the coaching comes in you can work on your coaching as a manager but you can also encourage your your employees to learn those coaching and leadership skills as well so that they can they can start to advocate for their ideas through you know through your team and and through different teams in the organization so these are some of the the foundations that you can do so that if you've got a team that's already looking at being incremental change ready looking at always you know always being prepared to to look at improvement in processes it makes it a lot easier to to adapt once you're when you're facing a situation where a larger change is needed as it's not it's not it's not as much of this it's always going to be a surprise when something like like covid hits but if you have a team that knows that they have to always be ready to change then when change comes they're much they're much more able to face it and when they're not certainly be there for them but you can look at you it becomes a me easier to talk about the changes that happen in a process and then you can focus your energy on on the emotional and and other aspects of change that people are going through so I I did take a bit of a different approach here we did have you know small changes large changes that I'd be happy to discuss in in question time but I hope this provides you with with some of a foundation of of what you can do as even if you're not at the highest the highest senior management level to get your team and yourself ready for change thank you Melissa that was great next up we have Kelvin Watson and so I'll hand it over to him good evening everybody um I'm Kelvin Watson executive director for Las Vegas Park County library district and today I want to really talk about the uh playbook 2026 so I'm I'm glad I had the opportunity to you know here you know to follow uh my my pack colleagues and really talk about how the global COVID-19 the global global pandemic for Las Vegas Park County really as for everybody really instantly reshaped how we would function and deliver on our previous strategic plan which was the vision 2020 from the lessons learned during during COVID-19 the Las Vegas Park County Library District developed and implemented what we call our is is our playbook 2026 this is a a strategic approach that continues to strengthen and shape our library district as an essential community asset playbook 2026 um focuses on our customers is community driven but it also represents the lessons of our current era of adaptive change pandemic pivots and breaking systematic biases that are barriers to inclusion innovation and involvement playbook 2026 encourages everyone in every department in our organization to make what we call their their best plays and achieve impact through four activators that i'm going to talk about powerful people powerful places powerful partnerships and powerful platforms um playbook 2026 is really out to change the game and how you think about strategic strategic planning and an approach it's very flexible it's ever evolving it's like if you're football fan this is a perfect you know perfect type of plan to evolve to to implement uh because it's ever evolving um and it's also inclusive of all departments all of our branches our operational staff uh to demonstrate the public value and innovation uh playbook 2026 is transformational we're it's internal library learning um impacting our external library learning experiences and the conditions that we you know ensure that all individuals and communities have resources uh to move forward so what you'll see is our is our team roster and that is uh i'm the coach and this is the this is the primary team that helped develop the strategic playbook 2026 um it was a cross functional group across you know the organization and really again focusing on our our the vision the mission and and four parts which are limited learn limitless learning business and career success government and social services community and culture and you'll see when i when i show you the actual plays how that's actually breaking down i'm going to give you all some some examples of how we've been executing the strategic playbook 2026 since we last implemented it uh in july uh 2021 so it's really a reinvention of the public library is what i think about uh it being from you know from the social aspects the the learning aspects economics and then how you can tie in technology focusing and looking at who your competition is for example google amazon and you know tick tock and then of course the the flexibility uh of the pandemic and the wild cards and how that really has the young has can upset everything and how you have to you know be ready for uh ready to pivot the playbook innovation um pre and post pandemic feedback is what we we used we kind of tweak some things from our previous uh our previous uh strategic plan trash and things and we did some transformation and then we looked at how we can activate those strategies that i talked about to be more inclusive responsive relevant and adaptive in focusing on people places partnerships as well as platforms some of our and and then tying that back to those strategic directions that i mentioned earlier which are the limitless learning of business and career success connecting to government and social services as well as community and culture so limitless learning breaking it down this is what it's about closing the education gap being interest driven uh learning increasing literacy in all areas uh and a poor actually talked about some of the things that we're actually doing here as well in executing uh you know our our strategic playbook and here are the actual plays when it comes to limitless learning powerful people we're you know we're going to focus on the the customers the staff the educators volunteers mentors donors uh the ccd which is a car county school district and partnering with them and we were offering our public library ebooks uh to over 320 000 students since the launch of this strategic plan um powerful places looking at our learning labs our maker spaces and and and casinos local employers and how how we actually activate learning and moving and pushing the library actually outside of the four the four walls as well as leveraging the the walls of the library as well so we put digital library access on 400 of our buses here in southern nevada leveraging those powerful places powerful partnerships uh again ccsd our charter schools are our post-secondary um uh partners ccsn unlv for example we started launching classes with the college of southern nevada out of one of our branches about three weeks ago so now we're offering class they're offering classes out of our library building so that the people in the neighborhood don't have to travel to the central campus and then powerful uh powerful platforms looking at you know uh online more online databases career online high school things like that to to move forward and basically i won't go through every one but basically that's kind of what we did for each one of those strategic focuses we looked at it business and career success again broke that down um and then looked at the actual plays and how we would actually demonstrate and execute on delivering with people places partnerships and platforms and then every branch uh here's the government what i'm gonna say is i go through my slides because i know we gotta save some time for our next pack speaker and some questions but uh every branch manager every staff member is also developing their own individual uh plays their own plays that kind of build up uh into the overall strategic strategic plan and so again you can see how we did community you know i just did the government uh the government and then community and culture here here that is as well and i'm going to share my slides and make those available to everyone uh and this is also on our website the our strategic playbook 2026 um and so i think i'm going to wrap it up after this you know very involved as i said we are all in it to win it that's our approach uh there's no you know you know direct it's it's being innovative entrepreneurial coming up with ideas and executing them and being being involved uh in the community and focused on people places partners and platforms so i think that is it for me and i will wrap it up there thank you thank you gilbert um that was really great and very detailed and i i'm sure it's going to generate a lot of conversation uh daphne it is now your turn uh and i'm going to hand it over to you thank you so much and i apologize for the uh the sunlight coming in but you won't have to see me on the screen for for much longer i'd like to share something with with everyone so i'm just going to select this and here we go so i hope everyone is able to see my screen which should also be your screen and you should see a document that says building a bridge to a better future so again my name is daphne wood and i'm very proud to be part of this very creative very thoughtful pat group as you can tell there's a lot of expertise around the virtual table and i've learned a lot during the uh during the course of this session i hope that i can contribute to the shared learning as well i've brought something here that i'd like to to share that hopefully will resonate with everyone who is listening because there are elements to what the previous speakers have mentioned there are definitely some common threads and what i want to show you in just a few moments is a bridging plan which is a replacement to a traditional five-year strategic plan that would be something that most organizations would have and they would use that strategic plan to give a long-range vision for where they are going based on the environment in which they work the context the pressures previous speakers have mentioned those pressures and context and usually that plan that that goes for that period of time informs the goals of the organization and can drive where the emphasis is going to be what programs are offered what services are delivered what changes are made but as we know during the course of the pandemic everything changed absolutely everything the way that we worked the way that we connected with each other the services that we were able to provide or in some cases we weren't able to provide them at all so the answer and the response to those those conditions were to take a different approach and take a very short-term look at what we could do for 24 months rather than making a commitment for five years which is what we had been doing so i'm going to show you some of the some of the content in this document and what you see here is essentially four goals that are going to see us through to the end of october 2023 which is actually not that far away now so our our plan is focusing on four specific things that are very clear goal one is digital literacy and access and as part of that we are very specific about what we will deliver and what we can commit to accomplishing within the 24 month period the next focus will be on community building and more specifically this is going out and listening carefully to what the community would like to see what the community challenges are coming out of the pandemic and and living in a uh i guess what is now referred to as the endemic presence of COVID-19 what we need to do differently here for goal number two is rather than go back and restore what we had and offer what we had before instead we need to go out and listen carefully to uh what the community is expressing as a need we need to perhaps make connections rather than being the solution uh holder for a particular thing it's a it's a it's building on strengths we have to consult and to engage but it's stopping short of turning on everything that had existed before and instead it's putting it through a filter to make sure that because there have been so many changes we want to make sure that we are responding to those changes rather than introducing what we know and what is comfortable and hoping that there is a receiver on the other end so that's really what focused community building means for us goal number three is making a difference in showing impact and i would summarize this one by saying we need to be more transparent and show the value that we bring and contribute to every interaction in our communities so for the first time and actually uh something i finished earlier today was a the first quarterly report which is a performance progress uh dashboard of how we're accomplishing all of the projects that fall within these goals and that's an important step for us to make this quarterly report outward facing transparent um it's informative it it's uh definitely demonstrating our our commitment to making um making our words um guide our actions when we make a promise like this for a bridging plan and it's also really providing a lot of clarity for our staff because if you work inside an organization such as this um you do need to know where to put your efforts and where to um put your discretionary time and energy without uh this bridging plan i think many ideas all of them well intentioned many of them good would all try to advance at the same time and we'd be competing and fighting for resources so this clarifies the impact we're trying to make by aligning that impact to the goals that we have committed to accomplishing and then finally we get to goal number four which is making space for everyone to be safe respected and valued and that really um goal number four is going to be the lens through which we view every single one of our goals it's foundational to who we are it's going to infuse inform and and basically be the way that we do things by the end of the bridging plan next October we hope to be able to say that we have not only recognize the barriers that that we know exist and found ways to mitigate them but that we have been much more open and receptive to things that we don't even recognize to unlearn the things that we have learned in some cases and be models for continuously challenging and um being receptive to doing better and to doing things differently so that brings to a close my my presentation at the end just wanted to to leave you with a look at what a very short bridging plan of 24 months looks like for someone inside an organization versus a five-year plan that can be more ephemeral and last thing I'd like to add if you can see with the sunlight is of course the the topic for this session is um it's all about transformation it's all about game changing and I've had to make some last minute adjustments in game a change to my uh my presentation because if you can see this there we go um I have a puppy and moments before we started she grabbed my headset and chewed it to these little pieces so um that's that's a loss of technology here but um I had a plan B so I hope I hope everyone enjoyed the session and all of our previous speakers and now we can turn to the questions thank you thank you Daphne there is uh nothing quite like a puppy to uh encourage us to be flexible in our approach to life so before we open it up to everybody to ask some questions uh Sue and I thought that it would be nice to start with um in asking the presenters if they have any questions for each other or anything that they like to to to share now that they've heard what everybody else has said because um there was a lot of synergies that happened and I think um and a lot of building off of each other but you also shared some very specific details about your various plans and approaches so I think it would be uh I think we'll start there so if there's any questions you have for each other well this is Sue this is not normally a a shy group but I'll give you a moment for you to maybe think of something that you want to ask uh each other and I'm glad that Daphne um went last and was able to point out that there were common threads through each of the presentations uh some were more um obvious than others and I actually wrote down questions for everybody but I'm just going to start with it's kind of an observation and kind of a question for um Melissa and Kelvin. Melissa ended her presentation by saying somewhat something like that the staff will be ready for change whenever it comes and you know I'm I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you get the staff ready to accept that but Kelvin on the other hand I know that maybe other people don't that you came into Las Vegas Clark County in the middle of the pandemic and was the the playbook developed in-house did you um bring that in and how accepting is the staff of what seems to me to be a really big change um in the status quo or the way the planning goes so maybe I'll hand it to Melissa first and then to Kelvin and then others can jump in. Yes I can talk about getting getting staff ready for change uh I think this is something that that I there you're always going to have some staff who are who are just going to be innately you know ready for change at any time who are going to be your early adopters who are going to be pushing things along sometimes you'll have a larger number than others in a team um I find part of it is um you definitely use a manager have to prime your team for change um when you when you see a change coming um sort of you know let your team know as soon as possible give a lot of early warning um thinking back to the start of this of the pandemic uh when we started hearing that there was a possibility that there would be closures there's a possibility that that you know that that this was going to hit hard um I think we as a manager we we we right away you know we told the team this is a possibility we need to come up with contingencies right away um it's it's I sometimes there can be a tendency to think thing you not expect the worst to sort of think that we'll we'll kind of dodge this and it'll be fine and if you do that you're you're you're not giving your team enough warning to actually start getting work done and because we tend we you know when we saw that coming we we started jumping on it it made a little bit easier um but some of it also I mean that that kind of it can also get kind of built in at the cultural level that you kind of expect you know that there's a certain amount of of change that's going to come along you prepare your team to to adjust um you prepare your team to um part of you know you're being in our our limited resource environment our our teams are always making choices about where they where they can invest their time um and that's true it's always been true even before the pandemic we we we don't we simply don't have the people in the money to be able to do everything that we want to do so people are are having to pivot and they understand that they have to pivot when when change comes or when new priorities come so that they they can't do everything so they know that that there's change there um it's it's hard to gauge how how change ready your team is without talking to them that's that's that's going to be the key is is really go out and see how you have how ready people are um you know we as managers would like to just say yes our teams are all ready to go they're ready for change um but even the most change ready person might have a point where they they've just had enough change they've just they've just based enough and you need to be able to know when people hit that point um or if they're getting close to that point uh so that you can can kind of tailor what you're doing you know give that that employee what they need um so that your team can move forward together so so I'll jump right in um to talk a little bit about the yes I came into the organization last February as the executive director of the library district was uh was somewhat open we were still doing curbside but all of our buildings were open and we were serving the you know serving the you know the public and so I we were we were we had already been working or the team had already been working uh cross-functionally on a new strategic plan update what we had been calling vision 2020 um and when I had the opportunity to insert you know my vision as the as the new leader I brought for the strategic playbook 2026 which really talks about partners to you know those those pillars partners and programs and platforms um and places but it also emphasizes execution and getting things done which is that's that's who I am and as a leader and I you know and I had previously been a part of the library system when I was at Queens where we had implemented a similar strategic playbook and so I just adapted it here along with the team to fit where we were already going but to actually add actionable things that we could actually do and get done and people can actually feel like they are uh you know which they are they've helped develop and recommend those strategies we then uh you know implement the tactics to actually you know actually getting it done and um that's that's not been as hard as you would think because of the the library district at least this organization was ready I think to actually see some things happen get some things done the community was you know has been warning as well uh for this for this library district and this week you know I celebrated national you know national library week uh at the city council and the county and when you can have county commissioners who I don't report to but I was you know giving them a giving them a report of the library district say that they have seen the difference in the year of what we've been doing as a library district that is a result of the staff and the team taking hold of that strategic playbook and actually executing it. Thank you Kelvin and I don't know if you've had a chance to look in the chat but Martine has um a question for you that when a new director comes into an organization what did you do to prepare your team for thinking differently? Oh thanks thanks Martine I hadn't seen that question so I'll answer it really really quickly so um you know I've had the opportunity to come in and be a new director a few times and so how do I prepare the organization um it's communication uh it's it's me listening uh to to the organization to the team members you know I said I always set a plan um for example I visited all 25 locations within the first 30 days of my being here along with you know meeting people in the community etc and then it's it's also then communicating my uh my thoughts about what I'm seeing both verbally and writing and and and talking about how not just libraries actually interesting enough I don't tend to use libraries um always as my examples for my library teams I actually use um other uh industries in the community such as retailers such as grocery stores and how they are communicating you know Wegmans for example how do how they do customer service and so though I so I prepare them to think differently because I bring it I'm bringing in some different ideas um as a as a new director that's how I've done it Martine when I've come into not just Las Vegas but I did the same and similar type process when I came into Broward um and then I talk about agile um you know agile and agility and then we actually put agile software development not just in it but we we execute agile as in as an overall organization and so when you actually do those things and you're communicating them at the same time and then you can again one year later you can see like all the results of of of uh and recognitions that are coming to the library district that's that's how I've done it and again it's it's communication though bottom line is communication you fix the communication or start working on the communication uh that's what I would always tell people well thank you Kelvin and that segs into the uh the last observation I was going to make for Amanda Anna and Daphne um with the communication because Amanda you focused a lot on communication on your team which is really important um and for the the wellness of of your team members Anna also had a slide up that focused on staff wellness and safety as did Daphne so I didn't know if we only have like two minutes left um actually we're at the top of the hour but um we we want to start on time and end on time but I did want to acknowledge that um everyone here did have the common thread communication is there and um change um and transformation in in this um impossible time of all kinds of possibilities so I guess I will thank everybody but I'll turn it over to Deborah to close us out I want to thank everybody as well this has been really um great and I think uh will benefit all of our students here and hopefully as well perhaps some uh professionals out there in the in the wilds who are interested in the topic of change management and uh so yes thank you all for being here and um I hope we are able to have everyone join us again for uh our next uh webinar I think we have decided that this idea of gain changer is going to be a really exciting um series of uh of webinars in the future so I I hope everybody joins us and hello puppies uh as we leave after says hello always nice to have some cameos by our our furry friends so again thank you everyone uh this has been really really wonderful and thank you for your time