When we began our work with Durham County Library (NC) on their strategic planning project the Library was going through a major transformation with unprecedented growth, changing demographics, and the creation of new Regional libraries. This transformation and the resulting strategic plan were built around the following keystone philosophy:

Saying “Yes” to the Community: Durham Builds a Customer-Centered Library
Honoring the Past – Acknowledging the Present – Building the Future

When developing a strategic plan with any client our process is intensely collaborative and inclusive, with a high value placed on staff and community input. The Durham project was no different. We worked very closely with a staff committee responsible for planning, facilitating and coordinating all project activities as well as a larger group comprised of members of the first committee plus key community stakeholders. This group included representatives of local government agencies, the school system, local businesses, etc. Drawing from their own professional and personal experiences, this committee shared information about community needs and served as a sounding board for planning process activities and findings. Both groups were involved throughout the entire strategic planning process.

To maximize staff input, we facilitated a half-day input session for all library staff that included education on strategic planning as well as a visioning exercise to encourage staff to identify how they see the Library in the future. The output was innovative and creative and led to incredible staff support that proved invaluable during implementation. A staff and community wiki was also created to allow additional sharing of ideas and information. The wiki remained active well after the planning process was complete and served as an information resource about plan implementation.

In order to find out more about what other libraries were doing and to see some best practices firsthand, the library organized three tours for library staff and stakeholders. These groups visited branches in North Carolina and Virginia, with each host library preparing a presentation and a structured tour of their best practices. Question and discussion sessions were also built in, allowing for more in-depth conversation about processes, implementation and challenges. Staff and stakeholders were debriefed after each tour, discussing what they had seen, what could be transferred back to their library and what would be needed to make it all possible. Comments, pictures and learnings from the trips were posted on the wiki so that those who had not attended were able to share in the experience. Library Directors and staff from the toured libraries were also invited to Durham to participate in panels on Staff Day. This further ensured that all Durham staff, whether present at the tours or not, got to hear firsthand about best practices and had the opportunity to ask questions.

Community involvement continued to be a critical component in the development of the strategic plan as we facilitated a two-day future search conference with over 90 attendees. Participants included community leaders, university students and teens, among others. The conference was designed to build community and common ground and to inform the strategic priorities for the Durham County Library for the next four years. This group also worked on the vision and mission of the library and on reinforcing the vision of a customer-centered library that honored the past, acknowledged the present and built the future.

The resulting plan document ultimately included four primary goals and three supporting goals, each with clear objectives and metrics to measure their success. A “goal champion” was appointed for each goal to ensure the objectives of each would be carried out. These steps helped the Library stay on track, meet all of its goals, and succeed in its four-year strategic plan.

Throughout the process, Skip Auld, then Library Director, emphasized that library leadership take a “two-pronged approach to valuing both staff and the public.” He strongly believed that the success of the plan lay in establishing and developing partnerships within the community that would work to support the library going forward as well as with ensuring that staff had the resources they needed to implement the plan. With systemic, focused outreach to the community and attention to staff, Durham County Library was able to drive their strategic planning process and resulting plan to success.

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How to Transfer Knowledge Successfully

The full webinar on this topic is available here.

What do your organization and Drew Barrymore from 50 First Dates have in common? Both can suffer from acute memory loss brought on by lack of knowledge transfer. Institutional knowledge loss is a problem for organizations who get stuck in certain ways of doing things – and then forgetting why they do them that way! While Barrymore had a reliable Adam Sandler to remind her of all the important details every day, your organization may not have the same luxury when someone with key knowledge retires.

Are you confident that you can capture all the important pieces of information that your colleagues possess before they, or you, walk out the door? Even if you or your employees aren’t nearing retirement, it’s still crucial to institute knowledge retainment and transfer procedures to ensure that important information stays intact in your organization.

You may expect to pass on extrinsic knowledge to future employees: the skills required to perform a job, especially complex or unique tasks. But what type of extrinsic knowledge? A successor doesn’t need to hear all the details. In fact, it could be counterproductive as it could overwhelm him or her – or make them feel as if the position does not allow for any personal initiative.

Focus instead on three types of extrinsic knowledge: what is critical for the work, what is relevant for the future, and what is unique (few others know). You can pass on these forms of knowledge through documents that you’ve preserved, by writing manuals, or by enhancing organizational and calendar tools you already use. However, do keep in mind the law of “diminishing returns”: the more work you need to put into developing a manual or training tool, the less likely it will happen!

Intrinsic knowledge is somewhat more important than extrinsic to pass along, but unfortunately can be harder to teach. After all, how can you explain all the experiences, impressions, and creative solutions that you’ve devised over the years? Luckily, there are effective ways to bring that knowledge to successors.

Storytelling is a powerful medium for conveying that intrinsic knowledge. During knowledge transition, one can intersperse more formal training with stories about one’s experiences, conveying a sense of the institution’s ethics, values, and important relationships – while also preparing a successor for job aspects that are unwritten.

Whether you convey this knowledge through stories, collaboration, or employee shadowing, remember that knowledge transfer starts with early preparation – establishing best practices for your institution. Leave plenty of time to transition new employees before your or others’ departure. Provide mentoring programs and performance reviews of your employees to train your staff. A wiki can also be a great method to record and share formal knowledge with current and future employees.

With effective tools in place, a retirement can be an easy transition for the person retiring, for those remaining, and ultimately, for new staff.

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Laura Francisco
Originally published in ALA/APA’s Library Worklife, November 2010

Last night I dreamed I was driving a bookmobile.

I’ve yet to parse the Freudian implications, but in the dream I was in full charge of that big boy – a hefty white truck filled with books, a few helpers and a really comfy and modern seating area. Furthermore, the Dreamland Library System had thoughtfully installed a conveyor belt in the parking garage that automatically parked the vehicle. All I had to do was align the truck’s front wheels with the conveyor belt’s tracks, like at a carwash, and the belt would automatically pull the bookmobile up this high-tech ramp . . .

I digress.

This dream is one manifestation of a problem I’ve been pondering in my waking life: recruiting a part-time delivery driver for a job with no set hours or schedule. This employee would fill in, as needed, for the regular driver – maybe one or two days per month, and also a week or two straight when the regular employee takes vacation. The library director and I tossed around a few creative recruiting ideas that proved unfeasible. She then advertised the position as-is (no set hours, no set schedule) and received twenty-six applications in two days, with a great candidate already identified from the bunch. Problem solved, movin’ on.

But this library director said something that stuck with me: that she doesn’t want to “hire someone new every other month because the previous employee had received a better job between gigs with us.” A particular concern in this situation, for sure, but one relevant for all employees. Everyone is recession-for-brains right now. If libraries do have vacancies of any kind, they are trying to fill them as cheaply as possible .

Caveat emptor: lower wages often attract less-than-qualified candidates. This correlation is particularly evident among professional librarians; fewer and fewer newly-minted MLS/MLISs are entering the marketplace to replace retiring Baby Boomers. Even if some of the more seasoned (OK, older!) librarians delay retirement for financial or insurance reasons, the skilled workers leaving the workforce far outnumber those entering it. And there are few incentives for new professionals to enter the field: many public libraries are entering their second or third years of salary freezes, hiring freezes, asking employees to perform multiple jobs to fill the void and other HR practices that discourage applicants and current employees alike.

Want to avoid a mass run for the exits when the economy turns around? Find ways to hire the best and keep the best you have. Another super smart library director we know has a theory I love: hire fewer people; grow, nurture and develop them; make sure they perform well; and – wait for it – pay them more. Pretty radical, actually, but studies show that recession-hit public-sector organizations are feeling less compelled to offer identical incentives to compunction about making some tough management decisions and actually paying people for their performance. Sometimes that means some people get more than others, and that’s OK. Creating and keeping engaged employees is something you can do to make sure that these excellent employees that are helping you get through the recession will stick around after it’s over. Get a group of creative people on your staff together and come up with low or no-cost ideas to keep people motivated.  Need some ideas to get started?

Requires Investment (But Offers Big Dividends):

• Develop a skills-for-pay program where pages and circulation clerks can add small increments to their pay by learning and successfully demonstrating clusters of skills of the next higher level position.

• Support (with time and/or tuition assistance) the person who wants to study HR or Organization Development in grad school because your library needs that expertise in house. Bet she’ll have to do lots of projects for that degree that will pay off for the library as well.

Low or No-Cost:

• Have a group get together and make a funny and appealing video promoting the library in the community – I’ve seen some killer examples of those lately.

• Develop a cross-training program to allow staff to try out and learn other people’s jobs. Not only are your employees given new challenges, you are building a huge amount of flexibility into your workforce.

• Start a mentoring program between professional librarians and others who may aspire.

• That circulation clerk/amateur pastry chef whose mad fondant skills put Ace of Cakes to shame? Let her lead a program on cake decorating!

Bottom line – make sure your employees aren’t just sharpening their resumes and biding their time.

A library consultant of my acquaintance (yet another smart professional I know!) pointed out the connection between the ideas expressed in this article and Peter Senge’s theories on “learning organizations,” organizations that facilitate employee learning (Pedler et al, 1997). Libraries naturally focus on being helping, teaching and informing organizations by making knowledge available to customers. But libraries can and should also be learning organizations. One way to make your library a learning organization is to let people use and develop skills that may not be in their job description (or anywhere near it!) but that are needed by the library. When staff overlap their list of “what I like to do or want to learn” with the library’s list of needs, people grow,  jobs grow, organizations grow. And in this economy, you can build loyalty and engagement by letting people step up to do what needs to be done, even if it means you might have to reclassify their job when the recession is over because they are doing higher level work.

You might not have the budget to hire a full-time bookmobile driver, but you can let the part-time bookmobile driver get a team together to help implement her ideas to trick-out the bookmobile and make it a world-class space people line up to get into. It’s probably a little twisted that I’m dreaming about driving a bookmobile – I remember feeling vaguely uneasy that I didn’t have the right driver’s license – but your employees probably have some dreams of their own. And their first choice is probably to see those dreams realized at your library. Maybe you can’t install the Jetsons’ conveyor belt self-park machine in your parking lot (alas), but you can make sure you are hiring, developing and keeping your best employees.

Works Cited

Pedler, M., Burgogyne, J. and Boydell, T. 1997. The Learning Company: A strategy for sustainable development. 2nd Ed. London; McGraw-Hill.

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The Singer Group is a management consulting firm that helps public, private and social sector organizations reach full potential through forward-thinking human resources and organizational development strategies that get results.

To schedule a complimentary consultation, contact Paula Singer at 410-561-7561 or email pmsinger@singergrp.com.

Paula M. Singer, PhD and Laura Francisco
Originally published in IPMA HR News, September 2010

Too often succession planning efforts focus only on the process: the presentations, forms, charts, and checklists. Though these are all important, remember that they are only precursors to what succession planning is really about: development. Effective succession planning requires that you put the plans in place and then execute them diligently. Get each successor the development opportunities and experiences that he or she needs. And don’t stop at opportunities either. You have to be sure to provide the right support – external training, a mentor, a coach – to be sure the successor is acquiring the skills to succeed in the new role. This article will discuss how local governments can develop and implement successful plans for succession planning, just as they need them most!

Succession Planning is Just Filling Vacancies, Right?

No! According to William Rothwell in Effective Succession Planning, comprehensive succession management must integrate talent management with organizational strategic planning. It must anticipate change, not just serve as “replacement planning” or even filling empty positions as they become empty. Local government must focus on a strategy that places the right people in the right place at the right times to do the right things (the work you need to be accomplished to achieve your strategic goals).

Census and other demographics data tells us there are 83 million baby boomers in America today, representing a huge increase in the 55-and-older population. There will be over 90 million in this same group by 2025. Who will fill the gaps when these employees leave the workforce? Maybe not who you think. In this same timeframe, demographics show that the 35-44 year old group (probably who you are thinking of as your leadership pool) will decline by 15%, and 64 million people (40% of the workforce) would be eligible for retirement. Local governments must accelerate their planning and consideration of how they will deal with this reality. According to an HR Director in a public sector organization in Washington state, “Tumbleweeds will be blowing through this place if we don’t do something!” In another public sector organization we’ve worked with in Maryland with 210 employees, retirements are increasing, with 11 staff members retiring by the end of this fiscal year and an additional 59 staff currently eligible for full retirement.

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” John F. Kennedy

In other words, succession
planning is not a last minute effort.  What does turnover look like at your organization?

When you have a job vacancy:

• Are your staff ready and willing to apply for promotion?
• Do you have to go outside to fill leadership positions?What is the cost to your local government?
• Does it take too long to fill positions?
• Do managers and staff complain that decisions about promotion or transfer are made on criteria other than best qualifications?
• Is critical turnover high?
• Are key positions filled – but with less than full confidence?
• What percentage of your leaders would be selected if they were applying today for their current positions?
• Does your organization have the bench strength to staff its strategic and other plans for the changes that will come in the next 5 to 10 years?
• How long would it take to replace a key member of your workforce who resigned, retired or died?

Succession planning provides an ongoing source of in-house replacements and helps you retain key talent. It helps you prepare individual employees for future challenges and accelerates their development by providing challenging, growth-oriented and rewarding career opportunities. It also provides for critical and timely knowledge transfer – we all know the void of institutional knowledge left in the wake of the sudden retirement or untimely departure of a key staff person.  Succession planning helps you avoid lost productivity by addressing the new person’s learning curve prior to the vacancy. Finally, it can help you control costs, as developing internal talent is far less expensive than hiring, training, orienting and educating from the outside. It’s common knowledge that vacancy costs – the dollars necessary to hire, train, and prepare a new employee, combined with the lost productivity and possibly the acting pay you must pay when the person leaves – can add up to 1 ½ – 2 times the actual salary and benefits costs of the original position. Succession planning can help you avoid that loss of knowledge, not to mention the gaps when work is not done and priorities are not met.

So What Does it Take?

Succession planning requires the following ingredients for success:

• Commitment from top management
• A vision of where your local government is heading and what it will need to make it happen
• An accurate understanding of the existing workforce
• Objectivity – about employees and positions
• An open mind, including the ability to find hidden talents
• A solid plan and strong organization structure
• Manager ownership (not just HR)
• Well-coordinated training and development program
• On-going attention

Following is a brief outline of a process to follow when developing an effective succession planning effort.

First, review your strategy. What needs are you trying to meet? The challenge is responding to these needs with the staff you have now, can develop, or can acquire. What is your “best guess” of how the local government will be functioning in 1 to 5 years, based on strategic or other planning? Describe the organization’s situation, structure, budget situation, demographics, citizen needs, technology, etc. Next, identify your critical positions. Do you have any positions that would stop a critical task from occurring if the incumbent were to leave? Would the government suffer in the absence of this function occurring? Think about the organization’s leadership positions, including executives, department heads and assistant department heads. Depending on the size of the organization, consider taking the analysis of leadership positions further. For each leadership/management position, ask: “What does this function uniquely contribute to the government’s current mission? If the job were vacant, would the function still operate effectively and efficiently?” If the answer to the first question is yes (in terms of outcomes tied to the organization’s strategic plan), then you are looking at a key position. Don’t forget about future projects: These positions would be based on where your government or agency is heading in the future from a strategic standpoint. It may include a Director of Diversity where one does not exist or a Coordinator of Innovation or Strategic Initiatives when such a focus is desired.

Consider the potential consequences and/or uproar from a vacancy: Are there any positions where upheaval would occur or consequences (decisions not made, citizen complaints not satisfied, services not running, computers not started, equipment/supplies not ordered) would be severe if the position were vacant? What other mission critical positions exist in your organization? How difficult would it be to fill these positions? These are other potentially key positions.

As you go through the above process, you will also need to think about this: Who are the key people we want to develop and nurture for the future? Why was each mentioned? Do the high-potential employees in your department believe they have a career path? What do you-and they-see as their future here? Remember that different individuals–with different skills, experiences, and goals-may want their careers to take different paths. It may be typical for an Assistant Department Head in the Public Works Department to come from the ranks of Civil Engineers, but that doesn’t mean that every Engineer wants to (or should!) become a Department Head.  Nor does it mean that a great Communications Director can’t come from the ranks of the IT or Parks and Recreation Departments-or from somewhere else that might be unexpected.  Career paths can, and should, be individualized rather than prescribed.

Define the competencies – clusters of behavior, knowledge, technical skills and motivations important to job success – necessary for each key position identified. Competencies must be clearly defined and reflect your organization’s values and be linked to the strategic plan and goals. They must also be linked into your performance management plan, and again, clearly defined, so that they can be understood and assessed and show employees how their jobs support the organization’s goals. This process will also help you target your training needs.

Now that You Have a Plan in Place:

You will need to identify short- and long-term vacancies. For each position, ask the following questions:

• Who’s in the position now? When might they leave?
• What are the career goals of this person?
• Is anyone ready to fill it?
• Is the work critical? (see above)
• Could the job be split? Outsourced?

As you being to identify talent for these vacancies, have your supervisors and managers rate employees (either all in their department or those identified to be high potential) against various factors leading to success at your organization, including the skills, values, competencies, and abilities that are felt to be correlated with future success at the next level of responsibility. These can include integrity, customer service orientation, communication, teamwork, visionary leadership and other items of focus in your organization. Then evaluate the development needed to get these people to that point. The real job becomes then filling in those gaps that get the potential candidates from point A to point B.

When creating development plans, remember that there are various components that foster successful career growth – it’s not all classroom learning. In fact, 70% of development should be experiential – that is, allowing the person to participate in stretch assignments, job shadowing, job rotation or swaps, on-the-job training, serving on task forces, or action learning. Relationship-based learning, such as mentoring, coaching and feedback should also be included in addition to traditional classroom or distance-learning and self-directed learning and research. Activities away from work, such as volunteer work, community service and participation in professional organizations is also important for development.

As you develop and implement your succession management plans, make sure to periodically evaluate and update as necessary to meet your agency’s needs. Common mistakes in succession planning include some obvious (not enough communication) and not-so-obvious (considering only upward succession). Don’t get sucked into the “we’re a government – we can’t do this mindset,” and don’t expect employees to self-identify as leadership candidates. You will need to be realistic in what classifications for which you are willing to fund development and change and learn not to rely on recruitment as the answer to filling all vacancies. Having strong employee development and testing programs to develop skills and truly evaluate who actually have or has cultivated them is critical, as is showing care for employees’ development, and respecting the earned knowledge of those who are close to retirement.

As with all important initiatives, management support is paramount. With a well thought-out and rich succession management plan, you can not only find your way through the impending retirement of the baby boomer generation but can successfully guide your organization to a new generation of leadership.

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The Singer Group is a management consulting firm that helps public, private and social sector organizations reach full potential through forward-thinking human resources and organizational development strategies that get results.

To schedule a complimentary consultation, contact Paula Singer at 410-561-7561 or email pmsinger@singergrp.com.