High Velocity Execution: A Leading News Teleforum

Every month the Leading News group has a free teleforum on various executive / management / leadership topics.

This month's topic was "High Velocity Execution" with Leland Russell, author of Winning in Fast Time and Larry Levin of the Levin Group. You can access the Mp3 of the 60 minute call on their archives page or read the one page summary of the meeting here.

Some of what i took away from this:

• to  "win" (achive what you've set out to do), you have to move faster than your competitors and faster than the rate of change.
  
• planning assumptions: the longer the timeline for a project is, the more the value of the plan depreciates because the world changes while you're trying to impliment it. The longer you take to impliment something, the more chances there are of mistakes and failure.
• the "new normal" environment = more complex + more change + higher speeds
• When you move quickly, key assumptions don't become obsolete and the less opposition you encounter.
  
• you need to balance the right amount of time to get the depth to be able to think and align teams with the need for speedy excecution.
• you need to have a real time feedback system to evaluate what's working and what isn't so you can make adjustments as it happens. 
• Tactical direction comes from goals. The goal will remain the same, but your path may change. Be flexible.
• adult learning needs follow-up and follow through.

Suggested actions to impliment some of the ideas from the call:

1. tell yourself the hard truth about how well we execute. 
2. benchmark yourself against the 7 gaps (as listed in the pdf)
3. create conversations. talk not about what's wrong, but about what could be more right.
4. look at yourself- what are your own execution gaps
5. challenge yourself to think strategically. How often do you do it? How often should you do it?
6. What do you focus your energy on? Are they the right things?
7. How quickly can you move? How quickly do you move? How much are you learning along the way? Do you know when to move fast and when to stop?

Focus on Velocity (speed + direction = velocity). Balance the drive for change with very little distuption in whats important in the day to day. 

People give better answers. Ask Librarians.

Recently, Betty Morganstern of AACPL posted a link to Marketplace Radio talking about ChaCha.

Today, Bernie Sloan of the Digital Reference Pages posted CNN.com article "Who gives better answers, people or computers? Ask ChaCha." While Bernie asked about libraries who text, I had a different angle...

See below for my response:

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Hi all, I've heard of a couple of academic libraries that have texting available but now i can't recall what institutions they are.

I think this is something perhaps libraries should have been on the forefront of. This could have changed the perception of libraries in the American and World mind (still could). If we're in the business of information, learning, and community (which i'd argue we are), those interactions shouldn't be limited to a physical building, face to face interaction with another human being, or even an online conversation (like through IM, email, or chat).

ChaCha provides links with each text that gives the source information. Perhaps, had libraries developed this, we could have used that link to combine David Lankes' idea of knowledge being created through conversation and context. We could still develop a system where information / knowledge transfer is done through texting, email, chat, im, f2f, and whatever else- and all those transactions are linked to your Personal Learning Area (for the lack of a better name). In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, perhaps we can call it your Knowledge Treasure Chest. Whatever it's called, I imagine something that looks like http://www.visuwords.com/ and that cloud is the map of our answers, sources, knowledge notes, and more. It's the connections that matter. It's always the connections that matter.

On the back end of ChaCha, the folks that answer the questions (Guides) and the folks that make the questions more succinct (Expeditors) see, in their interface, the questions that person has asked before (and their answers). This is a feature that used to exist in the old 24/7 Reference software before it merged with QuestionPoint. As a customer, if you've registered with ChaCha, you can see your previously asked questions as well... Why can't we take that capability and turn it around for better use by the customer? Make it a system that provides answers from humans (librarians), but also lends itself to the information seeker as a place to build their context, keep their answers, finds, citations, sources, ideas, etc.

Granted, i may be placing a higher worth on the kinds of questions ChaCha gets but i think there is great value here.
----

What do you all think? Where do libraries fall in this? Are things like ChaCha a need?

the future of Maryland AskUsNow!

This message is being sent to multiple lists. I know the generally accepted practice is to apologize for that but this is good news so you should be pleased at the opportunity to read it more than once.
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Joe Thompson has left AskUsNow! to become the Associate Director in charge of the Western Maryland Regional Library. I am happy to announce that Julie Strange has assumed the role of full time AskUsNow! Project Coordinator as of September 1, 2008. In her time as AskUsNow! Operations Supervisor, Julie has made strong contributions to the service I am very glad that she will be staying with us.

A part time AskUsNow! Operations Assistant position will be advertised soon. Please keep an eye open for it and encourage interested people to apply!

Congratulations to Julie and to Joe as they assume their new roles.

It feels funny posting that message on the blog myself, but i wanted to take the opportunity to let people know what my goals are for leading AskUsNow! into the future.

As Project Coordinator, I hope I am able to guide the project towards as much, if not more, growth in the next 5 years than it's seen in the past 5 years thanks to Joe's leadership. Leadership that grew a wonderful community and a very strong and internationally recognized service. I want to continue to grow our community and expand it to include our customers more. I want to continue building the relationships between our libraries, providers, and customers and continue to touch lives.

AskUsNow! is not just about providing answers to faceless customers; it's about making a connection (even if briefly) with other people's lives during their moment of (information) need. I also want to continue to cultivate AskUsNow! as a safe playground to experiment with new ways of providing service, learning, and connecting.

Thank you all for all of your hard work over the last 5+ years. I look forward to moving AskUsNow! forward, together. I hope that you will all join me in continuing/creating this vision for Maryland AskUsNow!.

Get files to your customers the easy way!

Have you ever run into a situation where you needed to get a file (say, something from a database) to a customer, but they didn't have an email and couldn't get in to the database?

PROBLEM SOLVED! Use senduit.com

Just upload your file, designate when you want the file to expire (anywhere between 30 mins a 1 week) and send the customer the private link!

There's no need for your customer to have an email address, or for you to reveal yours. :-)

Is anyone talking about AskUsNow!?

YES! In fact, Julie tags every online mention she finds of AskUsNow! in her delicious bookmarks with the tag "askusnow!citation".

Most recently, we were mentioned in Hometown Annapolis (twice!), the CCBC Library Blog, and in the Cecil County Library online tutorials!

What are you doing to let folks know about AskUsNow!? Press releases? Blogs? Town Crier? :-) Let us know!

Tips for Handling UK customers

Recently, public libraries from the UK joined the 24/7 Reference Cooperative which meant we were now part of an international cooperative. Yay! This also meant that we had some interesting things to deal with, including different legal and education systems, language barriers (who knew!) and other such things.

Last month, QuestionPoint had a training webinar called Answering Questions for UK Patrons. If you were unable to attend the webinar, it is now available online for viewing.

Check out the QP Blog for links to the 66 minute recording as well as resources.