A personal obligation — doctor’s appointment — kept me from attending a meeting at the library this morning.  I was busily feeling bad about that until I had a conversation with one of our IT staff as I grabbed a breakfast sandwich on my way to my office.  We were just chatting about learning curves and transitions and deciding when things are a crisis and when they’re just going to have to be handled by someone else…

And I flashed to this post, The Crisis and The Creative, by Rands in Repose, that I read last week.  He starts by saying, “If you polled my team about my daily agenda, they’d say, “He’s either running to meetings or in meetings.” Glancing at my calendar confirms this: 14 meetings this coming Monday – double-booked for five of them. Sweet.”  Okay, yes.  I’m hooked.  That’s me.  I read on.

The part I liked most when I read it last week was:

Whether it’s Crisis or Creative, activities in these buckets run hot. Whether I’m making sure that someone isn’t going to quit or I’m jump-starting a brand new project at a time when no one has a free second, when I’m working the edges, it’s fast and furious. The issue is that I’m responsible for a lot more than just the work that’s running hot.

See those boring lines in the middle between Crisis and Creative? That’s an important part of the model. Items in the middle are the silent non-Crisis, non-Creative responsibilities that are my team just making it happen. It’s all very important work, but it’s work that occurs with very little investment from me because I’ve hired, manage, and work with competent people who excel at what they do. The middle isn’t responsibilities that I’ve delegated and need to check up on, this is work the team just does, and to understand how to get the work there, you need to understand the edges.

And what I realized as I stood there, waiting for my sausage-and-cheese-on-an-english-muffin-please, is that today’s meeting, unavoidably double-booked with my doctor, is about something that I had delegated (or my predecessor had, actually) that had reached a crisis and needed checking up on — but I didn’t have to be at the meeting to do it.  I needed to declare that this crisis could be solved by someone else, people who are competent and excel at what they do, so long as they reported it back to me when they’d figured it out.

Because, really?  I need to finish some Creative work.   I really really really need to finish some creative work.  Performance goals.  Vision and mission planning. Strategic reorganization.  Service and communication plans.

And I’m the only one who can do those things.  I’ll need help, and will be consulting and revising and editing for a while — but I can’t consult, revise, or edit unless I have the things down on paper.  And I can’t put them on paper if I’m hopping from crisis to crisis.  I have to trust the middle, and I have to let the middle handle some of its own crises.

And I do trust them; I work with wonderful people who are very good at what they do.  But I suspect we’re all testing each other’s boundaries a bit, figuring out where The New Boss wants to be involved, needs to be involved, and is willing to be involved.  So I’m going to set a boundary for myself.  Let the middle work.  Ask the middle to manage some of its own crises.  Divide my time more evenly between Crisis and Creative.  It’s the only way to make it work, I think.

And the giant piece of paper covered in marker-ed post-it notes that represent the possible ways we might reorganize our administrative structure won’t get more interesting on it’s own, so I need to give it some love.

Today’s observation from the SCLD meeting, on the flat truth of libraries:  A good contract that I can’t afford is still a contract I can’t afford, no matter how good you think it is.

Welcome to the real world.

One of these days, I’m moving this whole thing over to the domains I bought this summer.  Not yet, but I did take a bit of time to fix the borked CSS in the old template by slapping a new out-of-the-box WP template onto this site.  Everything’s still here, it’s just bluer, with less photographic Jenica on the front.  Easier to replace than to fix, and I have limited time to fiddle right now… and when i do start fiddling, it’ll be to move the whole deal to a new host.  So.  There.  It’s bluer.

Also, a colleague forwarded me this today:  U. of Arizona Student Faces Criminal charges in Chalking Crackdown.  He and I appear to agree:  Goes a bit far.  There are *ahem* more balanced responses one could take than arresting your students.

Over on FriendFeed, Dorothea Salo asked for a follow-up.

Jenica, I’m going to make bold to ask for a follow-up post. You are Head of Libraries. You answer to the Provost, who presumably has many more things to worry about than chalk on sidewalks. So, serious question: if your Head of Public Service (presuming you have such a position) had done this without consulting you, what would you have thought, said, and done? What if it had been a rank-and-file reference librarian?

Interesting questions.

First, yes.  I am the Director of Libraries, and I do answer to the Provost, who absolutely has more to worry about than chalk on sidewalks.  However, I happened to have an Academic Cabinet meeting on Monday afternoon, which is the Provost, the Deans, and me.  I mentioned this issue as we were discussing our local issues, and roughly outlined my intended response.  It seemed both fair and appropriate to offer the chance for my efforts to be redirected or informed by the opinions of that group.  As a result, I learned that the music school student association had raised similar concerns about our music library, and so I’m planning a response there, as well.

Also of note is that we have the world’s flattest library hierarchy.  There is no Head of Public Services to speak of, but we have many engaged and dedicated public services staff.  So, if one of the librarians or staff here had chosen to do this, I would have, first and foremost, applauded the efforts toward honest outreach and communication, because they’re principles I value.  The people on the front lines are also in a unique position of awareness of our users, and poised perfectly to do that kind of outreach.

But secondly, had they chosen to do this without consulting me, I would have been frustrated.  My frustration would likely have come from the fact that while I appreciate initiative and innovation, as Director of Libraries, I will be front-and-center for any fallout that comes of public actions made by The Libraries.  I want to find myself, in an ideal world, in a position where I can always back up the decisions and actions of library staff, and both defend and explain those actions as needed.  If I’m not informed of public statements and actions, then I’m left both blindsided by any reaction to them and also likely to be unable to defend and explain them effectively.

Therefore, though I did this quickly, if someone were to go to the Provost to complain about it today, I hope she would feel that she’s able to say that she knows that I consulted current and historical data about our hours before responding, and that I was attempting to be forthright and prompt in my response to sincere concerns from our users, and that she would be able to do that without double-checking with me first, because she and I already had a brief conversation to that effect.

So that’s what I would think, based on how I’d like to see our libraries operate on this particular campus.  What I’d say and do?  Would depend on the person, and the public-facing action, honestly.  If I disagreed with the action or the message, I’d request that we change it, probably ASAP, and engage the staff member in a discussion of why that was their response, and what I think is a better response, and why.  Regardless, however, I’d be likely to ask for a heads-up the next time there was a need for outreach, and explain my desire to be kept in the loop for all of our public-facing actions.  And I’d explain my reasons for that desire — it’s not about micromanagement or message control or the usurpation of the traditional roles and responsibilities of any one position, but about being the one who’s ultimately responsible for our presence on campus, and for supporting the efforts of all library staff.  The more I know, the better I can do that, and, yes, sometimes direct it, if that’s what I think is necessary.

How’s that for an answer?

Days like today provide one of the reasons I’ve always wanted to be a library director.  I want to be part of the library’s outreach efforts, to direct them toward goals that make sense to me, and to have the chance to make meaningful connections with users.  I didn’t expect that chance to come from sidewalk chalk, but I’ve been having fun, even so.

I came in Monday morning to see these messages all over our sidewalks.  Every approach to Crumb Library had been tagged:

A very public complaint, and a very clear one.  I don’t feel comfortable ignoring or responding privately to public complaints.  So, later in the day, I replied:

While I was writing my replies, I was stopped by a few students.  One said, “More chalk?” And I grinned, said, “The libraries’ response.” He was flabbergasted that we were replying to chalk notes.  I said, “Hey, you want to talk to me in chalk, I’ll respond in chalk.”

Except I really responded with a poster.

The poster, as a .jpg on Flickr (click through for larger version):

So there it is.  People have been complimenting me on the response all day.  We’re working up a similar poster for the Crane Library to respond to concerns from the music school students.  I was aiming for fast, transparent, and public, and I think I hit all three goals.  I realize, as I type this, that I was also aiming for personable and approachable, and I hope I hit that one, too.  I spent half an hour talking to people and soliciting opinions about approaches, and a few hours fiddling with a poster design… and maybe, just maybe, as a result of my decision to take those few hours last night to respond, the people who’re frustrated that we close at 6 on Fridays will understand why that is.  And maybe we’ll get some suggestions about what they’d prefer we do.

Either way, it was fun.  C’mon, who doesn’t like sidewalk chalk?