Geoffrey Skinner
LIBR 204
April 20, 2001
Strategic planning presents an organization with the opportunity to do self-analysis (Stueart & Moran, 1998). Basic goals and wishes can be examined in the light of available resources, including the commitment of an organization to carry a plan through. Sometimes the process may uncover surprises and conflicts, but without strategic thinking and planning, an organization may stumble into failure-the old adage that failing to plan is planning to fail (Proudfit, 2000) will likely hold true.
Although I've worked in the Stanford Libraries for the past 16 years, I've never been privy to any strategic planning as a paraprofessional-although plans have undoubtedly been formulated and have no doubt affected my position. I do, however, have some experience with strategic planning in another context. I've been part of an environmental organization, the Trail Center (TC), for the past 15 years and have served as president for the past two. In 1998, the former president charged the Board of Directors with revising our mission statement as the start of a planning process after a period of turmoil. The executive director had recently resigned because he was unable to raise enough funds to run the organization. It was the ideal time to rethink our direction.
Heather Johnson (1994) notes, "The day to day events drive out most strategic good intentions." This proved to be true at the TC, where the other Board members felt we couldn't devote time to reformulating our mission statement when we needed to hire new staff and fulfill contractual obligations. Nonetheless, the Board agreed to discuss the issue, but the process unearthed a hidden division in the Board itself. By default, the we never produced more than draft mission, vision and values statements before the dispute erupted; the president resigned, along with half the Board. We had run into what Johnson (1994) termed disturbing issues that we were unwilling to confront-the planning process was a farce and deserved to be discarded.
Had the president initiated the process with a SWOT analysis and an agreement to plan from the rest of the Board, the result might have been different. In working through the BAA+PCCF Library plan, the SWOT analysis was my most useful tool for identifying the Library's internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external (environmental) opportunities and threats (Johnson, G., et al., 1989). All parts of the planning process flowed from the SWOT analysis. No goals were possible without the assessment because the internal and external situations weren't clear. For the BAA+PCCF Library, the need for a thorough analysis was critical-the parent organization is in a state of flux, following a merger, and the library's future is shaky. As was the case for the TC, a planning process was initiated in 1998, but never taken beyond a set of draft statements; a new round is expected to begin in a few months.
My case study library is an example of Robinson and Robinson's (1994) specialized library that not only maintains a collection and supports staff to deliver services to customers, but also provides a variety of other services that don't directly use the library's information resources (such as a meeting room). The BAA+PCCF Library would benefit from the questions they pose about how well the library's priorities in supporting services and resources fit the planned budget. Some services currently provided are costly and funding limits would mean cuts elsewhere if they were expanded or other services added.
A goals grid (Nickols, 2000) could help the library to prioritize their services; this tool creates a planning framework by examining what an organization might wish to achieve, preserve, avoid and eliminate:
Like the SWOT analysis, the goals grid is multidimensional and helps define the current and desired states. In writing the exercise plan, I used the grid in tandem with the SWOT analysis to identify useful goals such as "increase accessibility to the Library's collections."
Strategic planning defines what is realistic for an organization (Johnson, T., 1995). A comprehensive environmental scan helps an organization target areas where it can most likely be successful; future planning can generate meaningful strategies for those targeted areas rather than wish-lists. For the BAA+PCCF Library, a goal to completely catalog and digitize its under-used press-clipping and pamphlet collection would be prohibitively expensive and would not guarantee a higher usage (although greater accessibility would certainly mean some increased use).
No matter how thorough the planning, I expect the BAA+PCCF Library to face the same problems that the TC confronted, particularly the fact of instability. Mintzenberg (1993) points out that planning supposes more control than is possible. No matter what period of time we choose, planners have the tendency to look back at supposedly stable times, when in fact, change has always been a constant. In the nonprofit world, every economic change brings new opportunities and threats as funding and donations fluctuate wildly; other surprises such as earthquakes or eviction could occur at any time. For the TC, the recession in 1992 dashed plans to expand as government contracts suddenly dried up.
No plan can account all factors; it must anticipate both the expected and the unexpected. Mintzenberg (1993) advocates a strategic vision or learning approach, in concert with planning, as ways to deal with change. The latter provides the structure, while the former can provide the flexibility. Even within the plan, objectives give an organization more or less flexibility. The BAA+PCCF Library, like many others, is concerned with social responsibility (Evans, 1983); its basic objectives will change as its social environment changes. The library will always face conflicting demands on limited resources and those demands will change over time. Measurement and evaluation of the plan's effectiveness and a willingness to alter course will mean the difference between success and failure.
Evans, E.E. (1983). Management Techniques for Librarians. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Johnson, G., Scholes, K., & Sexty, R. W. (1989). Exploring strategic management. Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice Hall.
Johnson, H. (1994). Strategic Planning for Modern Libraries. Library Management. 15(1), 7-18.
Johnson, T.; Jonas, P.M. (1995). Participative Strategic Planning with an Eye toward Economic Analysis. Paper presented at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research (35th, Boston, MA, May 28-31, 1995). Retrieved from the ERIC Document Reproduction Service, April 13, 2001: ED387015
Mintzberg, H. (1993). The Pitfalls of Strategic Planning. California Management Review. 36, 32-47
Nickols, F. (1992, May). Objectives, Systems, Patterns, Politics and Conflict. Performance + Instruction. 31(5), 1-3
Proudfit, C. (2000). Strategic Planning: Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail. The Small Business Journal. Retrieved April 13, 2001, from www.tsbj.com/editorial/02060803.htm
Robinson, B.M.; Robinson, S. (1994, Winter). Strategic Planning and Program Budgeting for Libraries. Library Trends. 42(3), 420-427
Stueart, R.D.; Moran, B.B. (1998). Library and Information Center Management. Englewood, Col.: Libraries Unlimited.