Building Leadership Skills: Planning for the Future

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Building Leadership Skills Planning for the
Future

• Instructor
• Stacey Aldrich
• stacey.aldrich_at_gmail.com
• An Infopeople Workshop
• Spring 2007

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This Workshop Is Brought to You By the Infopeople
Project
Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project
supported by the California State Library. It
provides a wide variety of training to California
libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered
around the state and are open registration on a
first-come, first-served basis. For a complete
list of workshops, and for other information
about the project, go to the Infopeople website
at infopeople.org.
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GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER

• Name
• Library
• Position
• What future thing that you have read about or
  seen in movies are you still waiting for?

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WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

• Making Assumptions Explicit
• Environmental Scanning
• Trends and Technologies
• Scenario Building - Manoa Method
• Wrap up and Evaluation

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HEADLINES 2030

• What are the top 3 headlines of the magazine or
  newspaper that you have chosen for March 2030?

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ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE
Assumptions?Decisions?Actions

• Important to make explicit
• Help to clarify our mental models about the future

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FUTURE
Strategic Direction
Strategic Direction
Strategic Direction
Strategic Direction
Trends
Wild Cards
Uncertainties
Critical Events
Discontinuities
Strategic Planning
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ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING

• Making a conscientious effort to pay attention to
  trends, patterns, emerging issues, and potential
  wild cards.
• Finding dynamic connections among the trends and
  patterns to identify opportunities and
  challenges.

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TECHNIQUES

• Read/Watch/Listen/Try broadly - look outside of
  your interests
• Keep a file of interesting technologies or social
  changes and record the patterns that you see
• STEEP
• Opportunity Hunt

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STEEP
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Society
Technology
Implications? Possibilities?
CELL PHONE
Economy
Ecology
Politics
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Society
Technology
Implications? Possibilities?
FABBING
Economy
Ecology
Politics
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OPPORTUNITY HUNT
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IPOD - WHAT IS IT?

• 20 GB of memory
• Holds about 10,000 songs
• Also usable as memory
• Lithium rechargeable battery
• 15 million sold worldwide
• Spawned lots of peripherals
• New businesses
• iTunes 400 million songs
• iMixes
• Podcasting
• Podcache
• Used cross generations

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IPOD - WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Personal Collections Customization
Music/Audio books/Podcasting
Proprietary
Rip/remix/burn Everyone is a DJ
Memory and Storage Capacity
e-Books
Songs, video, TV shows for 1.99
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MEMORY TEXT
SOURCE WISEGEEK.COM - http//www.wisegeek.com
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IPOD - HOW TO INNOVATE?

• Podcast
• Book reviews
• Story times
• How to Podcast sessions
• Podcache
• Audio tour guides
• Treasure hunting with clues from Podcast
• iMix parties DJ Showdowns
• Digital audio books
• Classes and equipment for local content

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FIVE TRENDS
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WHAT IS A TREND?

• Clearly observable changes happening today
• and expected to continue into the future.
• 
  
• strategic foresight the power of
• standing in the future

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FIVE TRENDS

• Age of Integration
• Converging Communication
• Digital Interaction
• Sustainability - Green
• Robotics

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TREND 1 - Age of Integration

• We are now in the Integration Age. It is about
  making things work really well togetherGoogle
  doesnt make the Internet. Google makes the
  Internet better.
• Pip Coburn, UBS Investment Bank

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TREND 1 - Examples

• iTunes
• Socialight
• Cozi

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TREND 2 - Converging Communication

• Twitter.com
• Speech to text message
• Google Ads

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TREND 3 - Digital Interaction

• Leapfrog Fly Pen
• Logitech io2 Digital Pen
• Singularity

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TREND 4 - Sustainability -Green

• Recycle programs for IT
• Market for solving resource shortages
• Architectural designs and materials
• Arnolds Green Ultimatum

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TREND 5 - Robotics
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SCENARIO BUILDING
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BRIEF HISTORY OF SCENARIOS

• Emerged after WWII as a method of military
  planning
• 1960s Herman Kahn created business approach
• 1970s Pierre Wack used at Royal Dutch/Shell

The end result, however, is not an
accurate picture of tomorrow, but better
decisions about the future.
-Peter Schwartz from The Art of the Long View
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VARIETY OF SCENARIO METHODS

• Method 1
• 2 variables
• 2 ranges
• Create 4 scenarios

• Method 2
• Multiple variables
• Multiple scenarios

Variable 1
?
?
?
Variable 2
?
?
?
?
?
?
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MANOA APPROACH

• Created by Dr. Wendy Schultz of Infinite Futures
• It is designed to create long-term, provocative,
  transformation images of alternative futures
• Good for sparking creativity not strategic
  planning

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MANOA APPROACH - HOW

• Select at least 3 emerging issues from different
  STEEP categories
• Create futures wheels exploring the impacts for
  each of the 3 emerging issues
• Explore the possible connection points among the
  3 future wheels and discuss their impacts
• Discuss a possible future created by the 3
  emerging issues
• Create a day in the life of story

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STEP 1 - TRENDS/EMERGING ISSUES

• Select the 3 trends from your table or swap with
• another table that seem most interesting ---
• maybe even uncertain

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STEP 2 - CREATE FUTURES WHEELS
COMMUNICATION?

• Put the trend in an inner circle
• Take a few minutes to imagine possible impacts on
  a variety of life aspects Connect impacts to the
  trend with lines
• Explore connections among the 3 trends.

WORK?
EDUCATION?
HOMES?
TREND
FAMILIES?
ECONOMY?
ENVIRONMENT?
INFO?
Consider secondary impacts
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EXAMPLE - FUTURES WHEELS
NEED MORE WORKERS
SMALL BIZ FAIL
EDUCATION?
NO WORK/ HOME SPLIT
24/7 Service
ENVIRONMENT?
MULTIPLE COMMUNICATION METHODS
INFO?
NEED 24/7 IT STAFF
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EXPLORE CONNECTIONS
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
TREND 1
IMPACT
IMPACT
TREND 2
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
TREND 3
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
IMPACT
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STEP 2 - CREATE FUTURES WHEELS
COMMUNICATION?

• Put the trend in an inner circle
• Take a few minutes to imagine possible impacts on
  a variety of life aspects Connect impacts to the
  trend with lines
• Explore connections among the 3 trends.

WORK?
EDUCATION?
HOMES?
TREND
FAMILIES?
ECONOMY?
ENVIRONMENT?
INFO?
Consider secondary impacts
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STEP 3 - FOCUS QUESTIONS

• What skills do staff members need to thrive in
  this scenario?
• What does the organization look like? How many
  staff? What kind of staff? What are imperative
  organizational behaviors?
• What services and programs does library provide?
• How is the library budget distributed in this
  world? (staffing, collections, technology, etc)
• What is a collection?
• What is literacy?
• What does research look like? Is reference still
  alive? What does it look like?
• Is there a physical space? If so, what does it
  need to have?
• What is the role of the library in the community?
• What kind of technology do you need?

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STEP 4 - Day in the Life

• Review all of the impacts your group imagined for
  your 3 trends.
• Review the answers to your focus questions.
• If everything above were true, what would it look
  like? Describe a day, as if you live there. (blog
  entry, diary, a news headline)

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Review

• Assumptions
• Environmental Scanning
• Five Trends
• Scenario Building

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A final thought
When it comes to the future, there are three
kinds of people, those who let it happen, those
who make it happen, those who wonder what
happened. John M. Richardson,Jr.