Have You Made Leadership a Measurable Goal?
Are You a Knowledge Seeker?
Change has always been a significant issue for members of the information profession. However, over the last two decades, at least, professional goals have evolved from coping with change to managing change to, now, leading change and, as this decade begins, to leading the knowledge revolution.
Who are the knowledge leaders among us? All of us, I hope. Knowledge leaders are those who are respected for their expertise as evaluators, selectors, organizers, and disseminators of information and knowledge. That's us. While our profession is currently positioned to take this leadership role, it is also experiencing greater competition than ever before from those in other professions who would assume our role. So, how then do we maintain our leadership role? How can we measure our own performance?
To be a knowledge leader one must also be a knowledge seeker, one who is intent on expanding one's involvement with their industry both in terms of education and personal interaction with colleagues. Our need to be knowledge seekers might explain why overall attendance at conferences is up in all professions, why we like sessions that are case studies and why our networks of professional colleagues are so important to us. At a recent conference I attended, a speaker observed that we learn best from human interaction.
To be a knowledge leader then, one must seek new knowledge or, as I heard it put recently, join the conversation on the professional issues of the day. One must seek visibility. French author and critic, André Maurois, wrote, "The most important quality in a leader is being acknowledged as such."
Joining the conversation and seeking new knowledge can mean many things. When is the last time you read the literature of a competing profession? What do you contribute to discussion lists? When will you take the time to write an article to share your knowledge with others or prepare a presentation on a topic? What do you do to get to know a broad range of professionals in your organization? What ideas have you borrowed lately from organizations far different from yours and have you successfully applied them to your environment? Knowledge seeking and visibility go hand-in-hand and add to your stature as a knowledge leader.
We need to ask these questions of ourselves because knowledge leadership is a personal professional development goal that we must monitor like any other performance element. We must set ourselves some personal measurable deliverables in order to succeed and hold ourselves accountable.
There are important conversations taking place today that need your input. How do we educate the information professional of the future? How do we provide remote digital service with a personal touch; how do we most effectively grow our personal networks in a global environment; and how does SLA change to meet the needs of the information professional of the present and future? These are just a few of the conversations you can join. Your profession needs your leadership.
Donna Scheeder, SLA President
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