Leadership in the post-hierarchical library - The Library Director

Library Trends, Summer, 1994 by Richard T. Sweeney

The post-hierarchical library is a networked library with distributed staff, resources, and documents. No individual library has, or is capable of housing, all of the materials published every year. The networked library depends upon such services as interlibrary loan, electronic document delivery, remote searching, and delivery systems. Electronic networking with OCLC, the Internet, and similar utilities is everywhere. However, most library leaders have not yet responded with more appropriate library organizational structures meeting the needs of the users of these networked services.

Networked teams and organizations require more communication, more distributed decision making, and better methods for accountability. Although almost every library is networked today, most staff still operate in traditional organizational structures. Many important decisions requiring timely responses are still funneled back up the chain of command to the appropriate level of authority. Depending upon the number of layers, the decision gets slowed down moving from one person to another. In addition, the information gets altered consciously and unconsciously during the transfer phase. This is just like the children's game "telephone" where the first person whispers a message to another person in a circle, which is then relayed to the next person and so on until it has returned to the first person resulting in the message being totally corrupted. In real life, time delays and forgetfulness can worsen the situation.

In sports, the coach is present and can visually see and hear the performance of the team and each player. The coach gets constant feedback during the game from the scoreboard, the assistant coaches, the players, the referees, spotters in the press box, and his or her own observation. The only time that the coach can confer with the full team during the action of the game is when there is a timeout or halftime, and then the time is limited. The constant feedback that the coach obtains is essential to making timely decisions that respond to the people and immediate situation. The library leader cannot see every service transaction taking place and often has to respond after the fact and only when either the customer complains or the librarian communicates the problem. The library leader may get feedback, but too often the feedback is late, or worse, inaccurate. The networked leader must create new opportunities for getting reliable feedback.

Stand alone not only means a single physical location, but it also means individuals operating without regard to the team. For example, a librarian can make a decision that is an exception to existing policy to accommodate speedy service. However, if the librarian fails to communicate that decision to every member of the team, both present and remote, prblems result. Not only will other librarians be faced with the same issue, but they may judge differently. In any case, such a policy may never be discussed, decided, recorded, and communicated effectively.