Three Questions:
Information Professionals Tackle Timely Problems
Information Professionals Speak Out
With this month's focus being on problem solving, Information Outlook decided to ask four librarians how they would handle three challenges that are all too common to today's information professional. Here is a look at their responses:
1) There are company-wide rumors about cost cutting and layoffs. You think the library (or parts of it) may be one of the departments on the cutting block. What do you do to get management's attention and promote your products and services?
Mary Lee Kennedy: While every situation is different and cultural attributes play a huge role in how this is approached, there are some key actions you can take.
Talk to the boss or the most significant influencer/champion in your organization. Are they aware of anything about cutting out parts or all of the products and services offered by the library? There are only two responsesyes or no.
If the answer is no, let them know what you have heard and that while there doesn't seem to be any immediate pressure, you are planning to engage with key stakeholders to review the current and potential services and products. What you need from this individual (assuming they know what is happening with the business strategy) is a "yes, that is the right thing to do," or "no, it is best to stay out of sight until this round is over." Depending on how much you trust that person you need to decide whether another group of stakeholders/influencers/champions should be engaged in your decision. My experience is that not engaging is never a good decision.
Either update or immediately prepare a strategic review of the products and services you offer. This is the basic SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis. What do you offer to the organization that brings a unique strength to the success of the business? You must align your products and services to the business strategy and direction of the organization. Anything outside the scope of this is highly circumspect. Given the limited resources available, is there a better way to use the resources you have to add the greatest value to the organization?
For any threat identified in the SWOT analysis, conduct a competitive review. As the information expert in your organization, is there a better way to deliver the services and products? Is there something you should suggest rather than have someone else suggest and color their perspective on your ability to be objective? Are there tough decisions you have made already that proved to be highly effective ones for the company? If so, present that data. This is a real opportunity for you to gain credibility.
Review and present your research on customer loyalty and satisfaction. If you don't have recent data, you need to measure your customer's level of satisfaction with your products and services. This is best complemented by customer loyalty data and longitudinal evidence of business impact.
Make sure you engage your staff in your work. Rumors are rumors and if you know about them everybody else will too. Tell the staff what you know and focus on the proactive behavior you are taking. Ask everyone to be objective (that can be very tough) and get your team engaged in scenario reviews. You need to know the best-case scenario, the worst-case scenario, and at least two other options. If the worst-case scenario is that the library closes, engage with your HR organization to understand the people-side.
There is no guaranteed success but at least you will know you have done everything you could.
Monica Ertel: This is an all too familiar scenario these days. First of all, I would have my backup budget plan ready to go should the call for cost cutting affect the company. Generally, these cost-cutting initiatives affect everyone across the company (not just the library) and you have to be prepared to do your part along with everyone else. I would have my priorities lined up and a contingency plan ready to go. At the time of layoffs, it is too late to get management's attention and promote your products and services. This should be happening all along. However, by making sure that your products and services are meeting specific business needs, you will have a better chance of surviving the axe. The library's strategy must be aligned with the business objectives of the organization and this strategy has to be constantly reassessed and evolved as the company changes its strategy.
The library must be seen as a strategic resource, concretely tied to a specific business objective or program in order to survive in times of budget cuts and layoffs. By being tied as explicitly as possible to a very real business program or project, tangible benefits of your staff and services will be clear and obvious. Good, solid, trustful relationships with senior management are critical so that when tough times come, the library manager has an open door with his/her management. Constant and consistent communication between the library manager and senior management is another critical component of surviving the dreaded layoff threat.
Toby Pearlstein: It's important for management to see the library as a contributor to the bottom line. This is perhaps the most difficult thing to demonstrate given the varying ways in which the library contributes to a firm's activities. Anecdotal testimony is always helpful, especially if it comes from managers and department heads and specifies contributions that saved time, won business or changed the direction of activity to prevent time lost by pursuing a wrong course of action. It's also helpful if the library is not a cost center in the company. It need not necessarily be a profit center, although that really helps to show contribution to the bottom line. Showing that the library pays for itself through cost recovery programs can be very valuable. One way to get management's attention is to have a champion on the management team who can do the promoting for you or at least get you to the table to promote yourself. It's important to always have an updated review of products and services offered by the library available; a compilation of metrics that show the library's utilization; and at least have some thoughts about how the library can cut back if necessary to do it's part in helping the general belt tightening. The bottom line is not to wait until things go bad to assemble all of this ammunition and support, it should be part of the manager's everyday activities. You don't want to find yourself scrambling to overturn a cost-cutting mindset. If you've waited until that point to begin getting management's attention, I'm afraid the only attention you will get is that of being an easy cost-cutting target.
Susan Phillis: Despite the information profession's attention to marketing, organizations may view information stereotypically, as a frill that can be dispensed with in times of economic pressure. ("After all data from the Internet is pretty good, maybe it's good enough," top executives might say. "And we already have a huge headcount for information technology staff.") The consultants who are helping management rationalize its business lines may also be delighted to provide some third-party research, especially to support their strategic recommendations. Never mind that they don't thoroughly understand your company's products or clients.
Librarians in this situation (and if they have not seen it yet, they will probably see it in the future) are headed straight for downsizingespecially if the idea of marketing their information products has not occurred to them until this juncture.
Whatever quantitative measure a librarian can use (how many profitable new products did the library contribute to?) should help shore up the library's value. But librarians should be prepared to face the fact that some archival functions, even though they are good things, are not supportable in today's marketplace, even in the non-profit world.
2) Your customers use your products, but you are not sure how satisfied they are with what they receive. How do you open lines of communication with them to ensure that you are providing the correct services and meeting their needs?
Kennedy: First of all, good thinking! At the end of the day we are here to ensure our customers have the products and services that make a difference to the business.
There are many different types of customers so the first thing to do is understand how they can be engaged most effectively. It is critical to understand the different biases inherent in the various satisfaction-gathering techniques such as interviews, self-reporting surveys, and focus groups. Decide which one(s) will work best for your organization. If you do not have expertise in customer satisfaction studies and can afford an outside firm to develop the instruments and/or conduct the analysis, do it.
If you can't afford an outside firm, use your research skills to learn all you can about satisfaction techniques and instrument design. Engage other groups with analytical/survey skills in critiquing the plan. Some potential groups to engage are market research, business analysts, human resources, or customer relations.
Consider the frequency with which you need to engage your target audience on satisfaction. Asking for feedback too often can be a negative experience and can lead to lower satisfaction ratings. Again, different audiences have different frequency tolerances. You may want to consider a frequency plan based on the level of specificity you seek. My experience is that anything requiring more than quarterly feedback is overdoing it and for overall satisfaction once a year may be enough.
Take your plan to a few champions in critical customer groups. Tell them why you want to do this, what you want to do, and how you will use it to improve your service and product offerings to them. Make sure you have an engagement plan that matches the level involvement they are comfortable with.
Whatever method you choose, make sure you communicate back to your customers. Clearly articulate your follow-up reports in their language. Specifically cover what you are going to do differently for them, why you have made the choices you have, how you will measure the success of the proposed changes, and how often you will engage their feedback. There are many ways to do this and you will want to consider a combination of them including group presentations, online communications, scorecard reporting on a group Web site, one-on-one meetings, etc. Deliver on your promises and stay engaged so you always have open lines to your customers.
Ertel: You have to constantly be in touch with your clients to make sure that your services are relevant and meeting their needs. If you have to "open lines of communication," you are already in trouble. What you need to do is maintain an open line of communication with your clients. This can be done in many different ways. A very simple way is to get out of the library or your office and walk around, poke your head in people's offices, chat in the hallways, sit with people in the cafeteria, attend meetings, call people for a quick chat, and check in with your clients on a continual basis to make sure the library is providing value-added services. This must be done constantly. More formal methods can include quarterly or annual surveys to assess specific services. Written surveys need to be supplemented with verbal or face-to-face follow-up since their return rate is not sufficient.
Pearlstein: We use several methods to learn how satisfied our customers are with our services: surveys, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups. No one way is the best, and we have to employ each at different times depending on how dispersed the target user population is. The first line of communication, though, is at the individual request level. This is where the researcher can help to focus the request to be sure what is needed is understood; and this is where a timely follow-up indicates whether the results had value or not. Getting in the habit of doing a good reference interview and a timely follow-up is the best way to keep an ongoing communication with your customers and understanding how satisfied they are. Regular surveys and focus groups also have their value. When customers come to expect that you will be seeking their input on a regular basis, they tend to be receptive to giving it. We find random one-on-one interviews very helpful if your customers are at the same location. Simply walking around and talking to people on a regular basis can be an eye opener. We find that it's not only important to have the "elevator speech" ready at all times, it's also important to be able to solicit input on the fly whenever an opportunity presents itself to interact with your customers beyond the walls of the information center. Finally, it's important to close the loop with customers from whom you have solicited feedback. One way we do this is through presentations to groups of users to assure them you have heard their input, are planning to act on it and what it is you are planning to do. In this way they don't feel like the time they spent giving their input was wasted but that it was actually put to use.
Phillis: First, have a heart to heart talk with yourself, your staff, and your manager about why lines of communication are not already open.
Second, meet with customers' managers to discuss the least intrusive way to get the information, whether it is a telephone or written survey, focus groups, or meetings with a few individual decision-makers.
Third, use the feedback to improve your products, and take the results back to the users.
Fourth, don't let it happen again.
3) You discover that a client is on the verge of using other services. What do you do to pull them back in the fold and ensure their satisfaction in the future?
Kennedy: The first question to ask yourself is if this is a client you want to have (i.e., is it a strategic client or one that you have chosen not to focus on because you decided your resources were best applied elsewhere?).
If this is a strategic client, get on the phone immediately and call them up. Ask for a meeting to review your groups work with the goal of getting their feedback. Hopefully they will want to meet with you. If not, the more direct conversation will be required. If they completely close you out, try to engage them as to why and request an opportunity to discuss.
If they completely close you out, try to engage them as to why and request an opportunity to discuss. You may have a problem you were not even aware of. As a leader you need to understand it so you can deal with it. If so, step away from the customer relationship and focus on the leadership responsibility you both share on behalf of the organization. If the customer is not able to answer the phone, leave a message. For more senior individuals contact their administrator and ask for a meeting. Follow up with an agenda via e-mail.
If this isn't a strategic customer, conduct a brief review of your current resource assignments. Can you commit more to the group? Should you? Does it make good business sense? Is it better for the customer to find alternative sources of services? Phone the customer and ask for a meeting. Decide whether the meeting is about gaining back a customer, or letting one go.
Before you go into the meeting with the client (strategic or not) know exactly what you want to get out of it, what you can commit to, and what you absolutely cannot do. Do not change your mind halfway through unless you receive information that is totally outside the scenarios you ran through before you met. Depending how seriously the new information affects your resources, make a decision then or ask to come back with a revised suggestion. Make sure you have talked with the individuals who are directly responsible for the client relationship. Also, if you know what other services are being considered, do a comparison chartrelative strengths and weaknesses, including service levels, costs, expertise, and even legal considerations (i.e., intellectual property). Play out the scenarios as the client and as the provider. Make sure you can see the decision from the client's point of view.
At the meeting express your interest in problem resolution. If the strategic customer is not satisfied, be sure to indicate that you plan to review it at the next business planning/budgeting exercise and you want that client to work on it with you. If the non-strategic client cannot be satisfied with the current level of service, and you cannot offer more, explain your decision and why you believe you are making the best decision for the organization.
Assuming the meeting goes well with the strategic client, recommend a check-up plan to review key service deliverables and to address the original concerns. Hold those who are responsible for the client's satisfaction accountable and reward them for improvements in the relationship as expressed by the client.
In the case of the non-strategic client, a successful outcome may be the agreement that it makes better sense for the other service provider to be engaged. If this is the case, keep informal communication open.
Ertel: Find out what the other service offers that would provide your client with the service they need. Do this by speaking with the client as well as looking closely at the alternative service to understand what it provides and what sort of model it follows. It may be that your library can't provide specifically what the alternative service offers. However, there may be ways to incorporate some of the service into your future offerings. Make sure that your client understands what you can do for them and be open to their suggestions for improvements.
Understand also, that the library can't be everything to everyone and sometimes it is okay to have a client use other services as well as your own. However, if there is a way to create a partnership between your services and the other services so that your clients are well served in a seamless manner, everyone wins.
Pearlstein: In this situation a detailed analysis of why the client wants to go to another service is imperative. Perhaps they are dissatisfied with the quality of your work; perhaps it is not timely enough; perhaps it is too expensive; or perhaps you don't have the resources available to meet their needs. The client may be unaware that you can provide all or part of the solution for them. Or the client may be seeking an erroneous solution that could be quite costly because they have analyzed their need in an incomplete way. By helping them to think through what they want and need, you can again reinforce your value, even if it results in them doing business elsewhere.
It's important to try and approach this without being defensive. At least acknowledge that something is wrong, which created the situation to begin with, and work toward finding out what and whether or not you can fix it. Once you understand the client's motivation it will be much easier to present a case for why they should continue to utilize your services (assuming their reasons are within your power to fix).
Whatever the client's motivation, it's important to reinforce your value by approaching the situation in the context of finding the right solution and being a part of facilitating that solution.
Phillis: Talk to the client and find out what the real story is. Is he or she suffering from a vendor's snazzy marketing or the old boy's network? (Is there an old girl's network yet?) You may not be able to overcome the effects of either approach, but give it your best shot. Use cost-effectiveness, internal knowledge, and shared company values (i.e., loyalty). If you lose, try again in a few months. But never say, "I told you so" to your client. 
About our respondents: Here is a brief look at the four information professionals queried by Information Outlook.
BIOS
Mary Lee Kennedy
Mary Lee Kennedy is director of the Knowledge Network Group at Microsoft Corporation. She is responsible for MSWeb, the enterprise information portal, and corporate-wide intranet search and taxonomy services. She is in charge of the library, including content management, collections (third-party and the corporate archives), LibraryWeb, and the research team. She also leads a cross-organizational intranet portal strategy for the company. Before joining Microsoft, Mary Lee worked in Massachusetts, Canada, and Mexico.
Mary Lee earned her B.A. in social psychology from the University of Alberta, Canada and a M.L.S. from Louisiana State University.
Mary Lee has been a member of SLA since 1988, holding various positions in the Library Management and Sci-Tech divisions, and also serving on the International Relations Committee. She is on the advisory board of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, has contributed to a new book on Knowledge Management (due out this spring), and is widely published in various journals.
Monica Ertel
Monica Ertel serves as Korn/Ferry International's senior director of Research and Knowledge Management, North America. Before joining Korn/Ferry International in Los Angeles in 1998, Ertel spent 16 years at Apple Computer. Ertel served as the acting vice president of Apple's Technology Group and was director of Apple's Knowledge System's Laboratory. Additionally, Ertel managed Apple's critical policy matters in Washington, D.C., and was responsible for the Apple Library, providing Apple-worldwide corporate information and research services.
Ertel earned a Bachelor's degree in social science and a Masters degree in library and information science from San Jose State University. She also holds a Master's in business from the University of Santa Clara.
Ertel is the founding chair of the Silicon Valley Information Center Advisory Board and is on the SLA board. She is actively involved in several organizations, including the Association for Computing Machinery Electronic Publishing Council and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). She is also a member of FID's Information for Industry Forum. Ertel is the editor of several books and has published over 20 articles in a variety of international publications and journals.
Toby Pearlstein
As director of Global Information services at Bain & Co., Inc., Toby Pearlstein is responsible for coordinating cooperative efforts across Bain Information Centers worldwide. Dr. Pearlstein is in charge of contracting for global external content that Bain uses at the desktop and through information centers. She is actively involved in the development and implementation of Knowledge Management activities at Bain, including the Global Experience Center Intranet platform.
Dr. Pearlstein earned her B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, and an M.A. in American history from the University of New Hampshire. She also holds a Master's degree in library science and Doctorate degrees from the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Boston.
In addition to being a member of SLA, Dr. Pearlstein is also a member of the New England Online Users Group.
Susan Phillis
After a long career in corporate special libraries, Susan Phillis became chief of the Business Library of Brooklyn Public Library in 1998.
Since its founding in 1943, the Business Library has been one of America's premier public libraries dedicated exclusively to business. Its mission is to further the economic development of the borough of Brooklyn, by supporting business information needs of its 2.3 million residents. Brooklynites came to the borough from over 100 countries and speak as many languages. Over half the users of the Business Library were born and educated outside America, and speak English as a second or third language.
Phillis currently serves on the Brooklyn Public Library system's Senior/Executive Management Team and the Core Competency Analysis Team. In 2000-2001, she was a member of the Library's Strategic Plan Task Force for its five-year plan.
Previously, Phillis was assistant director of research & development at American International Group. She also served as a vice president at Marsh & McLennan, Incorporated.
She holds a B.A. in social sciences from Bennington College, and an M.L.S. from Columbia University. Phillis is a member of ALA and has been an active member of SLA since 1976.
RSS
Feedback form
