Posted on by hildaweisburg

Move Closer to Your Vision

You live your Mission every day. You incorporate your Core Values or Philosophy into all you do. But what about your Vision?

Your Vision is your aspiration. It is how the library will be perceived in an all-perfect world. Although the world is not and will never be all-perfect, if you aren’t moving toward achieving it, your Vision can’t come to pass. It remains wonderful words. A dream that has no hope of becoming real.

So how do you incorporate a goal that won’t completely happen? As always, start small. Develop a plan to take you one step closer to achieving it. When that’s done, review your Vision and determine the one part you will focus on next.

Consider this sample Vision:

The Blank School Library Media Program is the center of collaborative learning, producing creative students who have an appreciation of literature, critical thinking skills, and a respect for others and self, and who are prepared to make a contribution to the world.

First, identify the key concepts of your Vision. In this example, these would be: collaborative learning, creativity, literature appreciation, critical thinking, respect, and possibly activism. It’s a formidable list.

Since collaboration is needed for so much, this is one good place to begin. What do you need to have the library be a center for collaborative learning? Look around your library. Does it promote collaboration? How is the furniture arranged to encourage that? Are there resources that would help? How can you showcase them so teachers and students will use them?

Now that you know what you want to achieve, create a plan to get you there. Will there a be a cost associated with it? Can some of the work be done for free? Can you fundraise? Who are your logical allies? Who will you need to convince? How can you sell it?

The three-step process Paul B. Thornton puts forward in Leaders: Clarify Your Ideas Before Communicating Them, with some modifications, can help you turn your ideas for achieving your Vision into reality.

Step No. 1: Clarify your thinking – You begin this process when you determined which part of your Vision you will focus on. Take time to think about what you want to do first. Yes, there is so much to do, but thinking is doing in this case. Get clear about your priorities, what you have time for, and what might make the biggest initial impact (early wins are helpful for motivation!) Then before going forward, test it out with allies and those you trust.

Going back to the earlier example, you might ask a teacher ally if they thought the library promoted collaboration and how it did so.  Speak to one or two students who use the library frequently. Do they think it is comfortable to collaborate in the library? What, if anything, would make it simpler? How close are their ideas to yours? Share what you are contemplating. Do they like it? Have other suggestions? Fold any new ideas into your planning.

Step No. 2: Prepare Your Message – As Thornton says, you need to engage emotions and address “heart and head.”  Think about why would your audience want this? What would appeal to them (and what’s the emotional appeal)? Hit the big idea quickly and don’t give too many details. They will ask if they need it.

Thornton also suggests blending optimism with reality. Too much optimism makes you sound like a dreamer. Too much reality, and it’s likely to sound overwhelming. Prepare questions that focus your audience on their values and priorities and show how this will mesh with them. Again, try your message out with your allies and make any necessary modifications.

Step No. 3: Deliver Your Message – You have worked long and hard at this. Let your passion and conviction show. Thornton says to make your idea visible, dramatic, and consistent. Use pictures of libraries that have achieved what you want. On the create a space that promotes collaboration example, you could rearrange the furniture to show what the changes will look like.

Don’t let your Vision be just a dream. When you make a plan, create a lesson, consider a new project, look at your Vision and remember what you are always working toward. Every step brings you closer.

Posted on by hildaweisburg

ON LIBRARIES: Tackling Time Management – Again

I have yet to meet anyone who said they’ve mastered time management.  No matter how much we have learned and put into practice, we have far too many days when we feel like a hamster on a wheel. Part of the problem is with so many tasks, both professional and personal, we can’t possibly finish them all.

The truth is, no matter how good you get at time management, there will always be days that are so hectic by evening you are exhausted.  If the large proportion of your days are like this, the energy drain will rob you of your enthusiasm and joy in what you do.  And that’s not good for you, your students and teachers, or your relationships family and friends (check out the last two weeks posts on burn-out and resilience).

Most time management articles and posts repeat much of the same things, which suggests they work. Most of the time we are not thinking of these practices as we dig into the day’s workload. So rather than going through a long list again, let’s try a simpler approach.

In an Edutopia post, Matthew Howell talked about Balancing Effort and Efficiency: Three Tips to Help School Leaders Establish and Achieve Their Goals While Keeping Their Workload Manageable. Focusing on just three behaviors might be just what you need to keep from becoming overwhelmed.

  1. Use Time Well – Setting goals with a clear why/purpose is a great way to avoid misusing your time. Think about what you are trying to accomplish and why. Once you know what the goal is, stay with it. It’s all too easy to get distracted. If you leave the room where you are working, you are bound to see something that needs your attention. Unless it’s a real emergency, train yourself to ignore it. Those pings on your phone?  Ignore them until you have reached your goal. The messages will be there later.
  1. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify – If the task (and goal) are too large, you will find ways to procrastinate because you don’t think you will ever get it done. As the saying goes, the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Ask yourself, is there a way to get to the goal with fewer steps or pieces?  If not, how can you break it down into small, manageable goals? Reaching them gives you the impetus to move onto the next small goal.

I have discussed my technique of telescoping, microscoping, and periscoping as a means of managing big jobs.  The first step, telescoping, has you look at the whole picture and breaking it down into smaller manageable chunks.  Next is microscoping where you focus completely on that small chunk.  Every so often you pop up a periscope to see the next task, just to be sure you are prepared for it when you get there.

  1. Prioritize People –   Those who know me now would be surprised to learn this was the most difficult lesson for me to learn. I would always put tasks first.  If I was working with someone, I lunged into what needed to get done, saving the “chit-chat” for when we completed the work. I’d skip right over the opportunity to build relationships.

Always put people first. In the long run the tasks get done faster and better.  It’s also a way to learn if someone can help you with a current project. As we find our way in these days of virtual learning and communicating and social distancing, it’s more important than ever to make meaningful contact with people.

One of your goals (and possibly a modification to your Mission) needs to be about creating community.  So often administrators say, “the library is the heart of the school.”  True, their actions don’t always back that up, but the more you can show that you are at the center of the educational community, the more indispensable you will be.

One more idea to help with focus.  See the graphic on the left?  That’s a .pdf for you. Just click, download, and print (SLW – Time management info).   Post it where you can see it while you are working. It will remind you to stay on track and do better at managing your time. Most of the time.