On the last day of 2012, I am looking out on a snowy day, thinking about the year.
After 3 years of work redefining and restructuring we took the plunge in November of 2011 and unveiled our new structure. So 2012 has been a year of changes in many ways, with the accompanying satisfactions and frustrations, with the satisfactions outweighing the frustrations.
We were a department with three streams: library, records, and knowledge management. In a time of restraint, and with the expectation of less paper and more digital information we knew in 2009 that we had to take a big step into the future.
We first looked at the skills and competencies in our three areas. Clearly there were overlaps and redundancies. Although the vocabulary varied, depending on whether we were in the records world or the library world, we all collected organized, stored and retrieved information. We all assessed client needs, although we didn’t all call it a reference interview. Some of us focussed on internally produced information, some of us focussed on externally produced information, and those of us in knowledge management focussed on policy regarding our information and how people used and transferred the information. Operating as three distinct units didn’t seem to be efficient.
Since our organization was not the only one dealing with these challenges, we spent some time tracking our relevant peers to see what they were up to. With the help of external consultants we did visioning workshops with our staff and with our clients across the organization to produce an environmental scan and to develop our direction. We reviewed our job profile structures to define accountabilities, competencies and skills that we would in our new world. We worked with our internal in HR team, and with another external consultant to develop roles and an organization structure that would suit the needs that we had defined in the visioning process.
Those two preceding short paragraphs cover 3 years of work to get us to November of 2011. It took time to be sure that the leadership team was all on the same path. We needed to identify and explore the assumptions we were making and to find a common vocabulary to voice our vision. We needed to sell our vision to management and to staff, some of whom were understandably sceptical. And sometimes we needed to let things sit for a bit to mature. There were differences of opinion, there was frustration, and there was at times trepidation. It’s not an easy process or a quick one to step out of the ruts we have travelled in for many years and set off in another direction, no matter how similar.
So in November 2011 we jumped. And now we are wrapping up the first year in our new world.
We said goodbye to several people, some because their jobs were redundant and some because they did not see a place for themselves in our new world. We are now down 10 positions. We are still organized into three streams, but now they are Client Relations; Service Centre; and Service Development and Innovation.
The library collection has substantially moved to off-site storage, as has the inactive records collection. Since the library collection was visible to our clients we have needed to do some active communication to explain that while the collection was in storage the service is alive and well.
We have done a lot of work on process mapping, which has been invaluable. There was some initial resistance to doing mapping, but one of the biggest challenges we have had is identifying who does what in the new structure. The work done on mapping has helped us resolve those issues, clarified our vision, and helped to get us all on the same page.
We have created three new senior positions of Client Portfolio Lead, each responsible for a portfolio of specific departments. Each lead has a specific subject matter expertise (one in records, one in library reference services and one in knowledge management) but they will be working with the client groups with a focus on strategic information management. This new role is being very well received.
One surprise in the past year was a delay in the implementation of new enterprise content management tool, which means that we continue to deal with more paper than anticipated.
More to come on what we expect for 2013.
