halfway mark

#blogjune day 25

6 months ago I wrote down a few goals I want to achieve in 2014, thought it’d be good to see how I’m going.

1. Become proficient in my new role

I think I’m 70% done, still more to learn but I’m confident I’m getting there soon.

2. Learn more about management, leading and building teams

I have read so much on all of the above in the past few years, but when it comes to the real thing, you will learn on the job. I found that it is important to understand my own style, set clear expectations and goals, understand the organisation’s values, and be genuinely interested in the people I’m working with. With a lot of hard work and persistence, I can build trust and good working relationship with my team.

3. Contribute one submission to a library journal

Not started. I was thinking of contributing to a particular journal, but it’s still not calling for submissions yet. I’m still hoping to start something by the end of this year.

4. Complete various ongoing side projects

I can’t remember what they are :P, two of them are still on my mind:

• compare citation data of papers that are available OA in our IR with those that were published in the same journal but not OA. (have not started!)
• an interactive data visualisation showcasing the annual growth, subject/disciplines distribution, most popular researcher and top 3 downloads, OA ratio etc. Inspired by a 2013 GovHack project, Australia In Review. (haven’t done this one, but started something different using IR data)

5. Walk 10,000 steps every day

I have stopped trying, I put on weight and my pants don’t fit anymore. I even stopped wearing my fitbit flex as it made me feel bad. I need a plan B. I’ve got a plan B, I want to train myself to get up earlier so I can walk my dogs in the morning! My colleague told me about the wake-up light alarm clock today and I have ordered it, will see if it will help me change my habit.

6. Start a herb garden

Done!

 

On leadership

#blogjune Day 20

Today at work we talked about leadership and we’re asked to think of a great leader we’ve worked with and each person in the room named one trait of a great leader. The white board was full, and I believe if we go around the room again we can name more.

I have worked with a few great leaders (yes I’m lucky :)), the trait I added to the white board was a great leader knows the strength of each team member and brings out the best in them. This is one of the many traits of a great leader I most recently worked with, there are many more. She may be quiet but she’s great at building relationships and developing people, she seems to know exactly how she can just push each person (gently) outside their comfort zone, and she trusted them completely. You feel motivated and energised everyday. I’ve learned so much from her and I look up to her.

I was thinking of @jaygee35, Julia is a great leader.

What if?

#blogjune day 13

What do I want to do if I’m not a librarian? What can I do if I don’t have a job tomorrow? I consider myself an entrepreneur, been there done that and learned lots from my business venture and I would not hesitate to do it again when the time comes. But what do I want to do?

Do what you love as they say, I love cooking and enjoy good food. Almost every time I buy something off a food truck, I regret it and thought I should start one and steal all their customers (*muahahaha*). For a food truck, you can succeed if you do one thing very, very well. So far I have only seen one that does their thing really really well, that’s Delish Ice.

Perhaps I can start a gourmet catering business, offering high quality, healthy catering option. I think that’s a niche here in Perth at the moment and does sound like the most satisfying and fun job to do.

And why hasn’t anyone started an Asian grocery shop that is modern and cool and comes with an app? Write some useful description for products or ingredients and stick them on the shelves as well as in the app (that’s metadata curation, librarians!). Share my recipes and invite customers to share their recipes with other customers or something to attract them to return to a local shop, which is also a social network – engage them on and offline. Best recipe of the month! Win stuff!

Ahh.. yap… lots of crap in my head. I have ideas unrelated to food too, but that’s for another day.

my 2000th tweet

I [accidentally] realise I sent my 2000th tweet the other night. Then I found out I tweeted for the first time 1,113 days ago.

Tweetbot says I joined Twitter in 2009, just to check it out I guess, as you would with everything else. I didn’t get it, so I didn’t visit the site for a while. I remember it was when @flexnib joined our library, she gave a talk about social media, how we can use Twitter for learning and networking, then I gave it another go, was still a lurker at the time.

I started to get more active on Twitter during my stint as a sole librarian because I think it’s important for me to stay connected with other librarians. I started to “get it” when I attended the 5th New Librarians Symposium – my first self funded conference experience. I tried live tweeting at conference, it’s hard, though Twitter definitely made networking easier.

Lately I started to tweet about random things, thoughts, and pictures, rather than just links, I also tried to converse with others. Twitter is very inspiring, that’s the thing I can’t find from most workplaces (unfortunately). I find most tweeters love to share their knowledge, ideas and things they are working on, they’re willing to help and answer questions, or help you connect to tweeps who can help you incredibly quickly. I remember when I was working on the IdeaScale project last year, I was after some statistics, so I told Twitter I wanted to connect with the IdeaScale administrator at Deakin University. I got an email address in no time, the amount of information I got from this contact helped me build my business case and presentation. I doubt I could reach the right person that quickly via traditional channel. It’s awesome.

The more I invest in Twitter aka PLN, the more I get out of it. I seriously don’t know what to do if you take Twitter away from me right now 🙂

That idea about a collaboration space in the library

Collaboration, I love collaboration, magical things happen when people with different background and skills come together, share their knowledge, and work on something together.

I have an idea about having a collaboration space in the library for a while, nothing new, but to propose on how it would work in our library, and express it in a way that others can understand is more important than simply having a “good” idea. I’ve been thinking how I should pitch this idea again, I don’t want to give up yet. Just thought I’d document how this idea has changed over time, usually after I talked to others about it. On reflection, I find it quite interesting.

About a year and a half ago, at my ex place of work we’re big about innovation, I was one of the Innovation committee members, it’s fun and challenging. A few colleagues attended an event at Spacecubed, it’s quite new then, they came back and kept raving about how cool it is. I had in mind if one day I have another business idea, I know Perth has a place for startups to setup temporary office, to meet like-minded people, find business partners or freelancers. Brilliant, I must check out that space.

When I returned to an academic library – where I am now. We talked about how we want to redesign our space and that everyone is going to work on projects. While I tried to sell my idea about an online space for staff to share ideas, I mentioned a collaboration or project space for staff to use, so they can be away from their usual office space and interruptions, and focus on the projects with their team members – usually not the same group of people they work with everyday. I wasn’t very confident about that idea then. Later on, I was informed that it’s gone into the space plan, not sure where we’re at now, I’ve never seen the plan. The idea about an online platform for staff to share ideas did happen.

At ALIA Info Online a few months ago, I was at Mark Bilandzic‘s presentation about the Gelatine check-in system he developed for The Edge, a collaboration space at State Library of Queensland. The system allows users to check in on their arrival, the skills they have to offer, along with the skills they need from others or they want to develop are displayed on screen right away. Users also get a print out of their “check-in”, the slips are pinned on a board next to the machine, so that people know where to find each other. This system simply link people together and make it so much easier for people to find others to collaborate with. I was so impressed! I spoke with Mark after the presentation and found out he doesn’t have a library background, he’s a researcher and a library lover, and he sees the potential and need for such system in libraries. He’s very inspiring.

This time, I talked to my colleagues about a collaboration space for staff and students to use. I got mixed reactions, some are enthusiastic about it, some thought that should be more relevant to public libraries. By the way, I hear all the time “but we’re an academic library!”. Yes we’re an academic library, so what? Regardless of whether we’re public library or academic library, we exist to provide a service, right? So if there’s a need for such service, maybe it seems to be more relevant to the public rather than students, we can at least explore the possibility before dismissing it? hmm…

Couple of months ago, I met an academic, Chris Kueh, who’s a design thinking expert. I learned about the things he’s trying to change and do at the design school, I was so inspired that he seeks real world industry partners for student projects, he also works out of Spacecubed. Then comes the light bulb moment, how about a collaboration space for students and staff to use, there will be a Gelatine check in system or something similar. We can also run social and networking events regularly. There will be a massive pin board for the check in system, we invite industry partners to pin any potential collaboration opportunities for students to see, students who come up with ideas or proposals could share them in the space as well. If our students come up with some great ideas, the space could be used as a project space, a startup incubator. Perhaps our Business students would be benefited as well?

Now I just need to put all these together in a meaningful way, and make sure the objective aligns with the operational goals of the library, as well as the institution’s. I don’t want to give up on this idea even thought it didn’t get a lot of attention. I believe it’s not a bad idea, it just needs further refinement.

I shall persist 🙂

My strength is also my weakness

I have been contemplating going back to Uni for a while, the cost is one thing, what I want to study is another. Not that I don’t know what I want to do, but I want to do too many things. I wanted to brush up on my programming skills, I want to do project management, I’m very interested in design and social innovation, I want to do an MBA…

I think my strength is also my weakness.

I like to explore and learn new things, and I can learn quickly. If I want to do something, I would give it my 120% and will usually do well. But can I call myself an expert in one thing? I can’t, I keep getting distracted by other interesting things, I struggled to finish long term project. I’m fully aware of this problem, and I’m trying to keep myself on track by setting clear goals. I’m getting better at controlling myself from making snap decisions that would steer myself away from reaching my goals, and that’s why I have put the going-back-to-Uni “project” on hold. It’s difficult not to think about it though, as I work at a University library! I’m telling myself that the process of overcoming this weakness would pay off when I actually go back to Uni because doing a postgraduate course part-time while working full-time is a long term project.

I’ll get there.

Let’s celebrate failure and success equally

** I drafted this post soon after I completed the MOOC about innovation. In this post I expanded my info online conference report back preso on cultural change, I wasn’t sure if I should air this kind of opinion in public, I worried that I can’t control how others interpret what I wrote. Anyway, today I’m feeling brave and I’m going to hit publish!

“Reward failure and success equally, but punish inaction.”

– Robert Sutton

This is my favourite quote from the Leading Strategic Innovation in Organisation MOOC. In this course, I also learned about why every organisation wants innovation, but nobody wants to change, and how we can overcome that.

I believe the above quote is one of the many things leaders, as well as everyone in an organisation, can do to build an organisational culture that stimulates and encourages creativity, collaboration, and innovation. By innovation, I mean just doing things differently, it could be very small. Like a side project, a simple idea to improve a workflow. If everybody in an organisation is doing something small to continuously improve workflows and services, the impact could be huge.

Innovation doesn’t just happen. Imagine a workplace where people are told that they’re expected to follow the procedures to the smallest detail, you don’t even have to think, just follow the rules, do what you’re told, 7.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, just do that and be good. When someone made a mistake or they didn’t follow the procedures, give kudos to the person who spotted the mistake, while the person who made the mistake will be named and shamed. You think of a better way to do things? Hang on there, you’re only new, we’ve been doing this for 20 years. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, ok? And also, we’ve tried it before, we know it’s not going to work! Oh, if it’s really broken, tell the boss, it’s their responsibility to fix our problem! It’s not in my job description…

Does our organisation reward inaction and survival? But punish failure?

We work in a library, not a hospital, nobody is going to die. How does innovation happen in the above hypothetical scenario? And what will happen next? People with ideas (good or bad) will get sick of it, pack up and leave. The remaining good people will do what they’re told, get rewarded with their inaction, and continue to do what they’re told. Until one day libraries become obsolete, we’re all redundant. Then we can get on to Today Tonight and whinge about our clients not showing their love for their libraries, oh we deserve your love. Just like the retail industry.

Does our profession reward inaction? Why isn’t the ALIA PD scheme compulsory? At the moment it’s not, it means someone can occupy a professional position without attending any PDs ever. What message do they send to new professionals? Are we rewarding inaction and survival?

Does your organisation support innovators? Intrapreneurs? You know, the weirdos? How many weirdos are there in your library? What do we do to stop them? If you don’t stop them (good on you), what are we doing to support them?

Do we encourage staff to lead without authority? What are we doing to make it easier for them to lead without authority?

Do we celebrate failure? When somebody failed, do we simply say it’s ok, act as if it has never happened and wish they don’t do it again. Or do we celebrate failure (with cakes)?

One of Professor Owen’s slides says, “It’s ok that your idea doesn’t work, let’s get some cakes and brainstorm”. Do we do that?

I think organisational change needs to be initiated from the top. But it’s also up to us – everybody in an organisation, to change our attitudes, take the leap, or at least not to judge the weirdos, embrace the differences in individual team members. Celebrate with your colleagues who have failed, celebrate the fact that they’ve tried, celebrate that we have found a constraint that needs to be overcome in order for us to reach success (Owen, 2011). Have a laugh with some cakes or drinks, come together and turn that shit idea into something better. I know this sounds like something that would only happen in an ideal world, but if at least 20% of us are doing it, and then we influence 20% of the people around us, isn’t it enough to make a real difference? Or am I being too optimistic (unrealistic)?

Work anniversary

I’m terrible with dates, I don’t seem to have the ability to connect dates and events. But for some reason I woke up this morning and realise one year ago today, I started working at ECU again. “Again”, because I left 2 years ago, and I thought I’d never come back.

I believe I’ve made the right move, because the past 12 months have been a highlight of my career in libraryland. Looking back, I worked very hard and I have achieved quite a lot. Since I came back from Info Online, I’ve been thinking of blogging again, but wasn’t sure 1. how long will I last? 2. what should I write about? 3. what unique ideas have I got to contribute? 4. who’d want to read it anyway? I know they are just excuses, I know why I dread doing it, I’m not good at writing.

Today, I feel I should just do it. In the past 12 months, I forced myself to do a lot of things that I fear of doing, things that I’m not good at, things that I failed previously. I’m glad I did, and I still am trying and learning new things everyday, the sense of satisfaction I gain from getting out of my comfort zone and nailing things (most of the time) is unbeatable. The most important thing is my workplace makes that very easy, I have been given so many opportunities, and for that, I’m very grateful.

I still don’t know what I’m going to write about, but I got to start somewhere.