Pat Wagner <pat@pattern.com> is the primary contact.

Description: Most strategic planning processes require too many resources and take too long for medical libraries with stretched budgets and overworked staff. Learn why a strategic plan is necessary for the success of even a one-person library, how to strip the concept down to the basics and how to create an effective planning process that takes hours and days to complete rather than months or years. Participants will create a working draft of a strategic plan with a mission/vision statement, goals, tactics and feedback and input strategies. They will participate in and learn how to conduct several different kinds of group planning exercises. Participants are encouraged to bring existing plans or plans in progress, as well as members of their staff or planning team.

Educational Objective: 1. Identify and use the five steps for any strategic planning process. 2. Tie their medical library’s strategic plans to their larger institution’s plan. 3. Create a working strategic plan that actually is used by staff on a weekly or daily basis. 4. Conduct a strategic planning meeting and use at least two of the exercises from the class. 5. Streamline and finish existing strategic planning processes for their library or institution. 6. Use their strategic plan to make hard decisions and set project management priorities. 7. Avoid the most common mistakes of “old-school” strategic planning models.

Agenda:

First hour: Introduction to “new school” strategic planning 

The goal is for participants to understand an overview of the five steps of strategic planning and the main differences between traditional and contemporary models as well as why even small and poor medical libraries need strategic plans. We will review the words we will use in the class to describe the five steps. After a large group discussion of the main model used in the class, the participants will take a strategic planning readiness test – are they ready to create a strategic plan?

Second hour: First step: Input

The goal is for the participants to evolve partnerships with the people and institutions the library serves, from internal support staff to patients’ families to students and faculty to corporate scientists and managers as well as other institutional and externals users. The focus will be on active, yearlong partnerships rather than surveys and formal focus groups.
Participants will identify potential partners and ways to reach them.

Third hour: Second step: The mission and vision: Where are we going, and why.

The goal is for participants to learn to focus their mission/vision statement on the better future of the people they serve and to create long-term goals based on anticipating the changing needs of their current and potential users. They will participate in at lease three group exercises that can be used to identify and prioritize the needs of library users. They will also create a new “destination” for their library: “In the future, our library will…”

Fourth hour: Third Step: The goals, outcomes or benchmarks: What do we need to accomplish to reach the new destination

The goal is for the participants to create goals, based on the new medical library destination, which can be understood and accomplished by their medical library staff. The theme is: If we really want to change our library to reach the new destination, what do we need to be doing differently? The emphasis will be on strategic and descriptive goals, rather than quantitative goals, and evaluating goals based on monthly and quarterly checkpoints. Topics will include tying goals to institutional plans and shifting priorities. Participants will propose in writing  what they will stop doing in their library and what priorities will have to change. They will write three goals for one part of their library using bullets, rather than prose and have the results evaluated in their small group.

Fifth hour: Fourth step: The tactics: How will we do it?

The goal is for the participants to work to delegate the details of how the goals will be reached to the staff of medical library, with input from managers, supervisors and library users. Topics will include avoiding micromanagement, creating oversight checkpoints and rewarding staff for success. Participants will participate in two brainstorming exercises and focus on creating healthy workplace environments for innovation from the ground up. They will also discuss how to use the plan to set priorities and supervise staff.

Sixth hour: Fifth step: Feedback: How did we do?

The goal is for participants to learn several methods for evaluating and modifying the strategic plan. They will design at least two methods to evaluate their own plans, at the mission/vision, goals and tactics level, and discuss how to modify the plan as goals are reached, failed to be reached or discarded. 

Seventh hour: Why strategic plans fail

Participants will brainstorm methods, based on the class content, to address potential strategic planning failures and share their results with the larger group. Topics include how to cope with: too much, too vague, no staff or library user input, no ties to the daily work of the medical library and no accountability.

Eighth hour: Creating a real plan

Participants will finish their draft strategic plans and share the highpoints with their partners and the larger group. They will be asked to share one thing they plan to do in the first 48 hours they are back at their libraries to jumpstart or improve their current strategic planning processes.

Need for This Course: Solo medical librarians (and most small medical libraries, no matter what type) do not have trained staff available to devote themselves to strategic planning. They are usually overwhelmed by excellent models such as Planning for Results, so they do nothing. Consequently they lack the guidance of a foundation plan for making hard decisions regarding resource allocation, staff evaluations and project management. Typically, successful medical libraries that have the support of their larger institutions are able to create strategic plans. And in my experience, the medical librarians who are able to create them were trained outside of library school. Even if Quick and Decent is incomplete from the points of view of people who support more traditional models, this model can provide the basis for more complex planning while providing for decision-making.

The instructional methods used include Lecture, Demonstration, Discussion, Dialog, Brainstorming, Sharing/Self-disclosure, Simulation, Hands-on Exercises, and Problem-based.

Participant Materials: The slides from the powerpoint for the first and second online sessions will be based on the reports that the class participants submit. The slides will summarize the results and ask questions based on what happened. The participants will receive a compilation of the reports each time before the online session.

Facility Requirements: The first live class requires only a flip chart or white board and classroom seating or “rounds” with tables.

Additional Evaluation: The class has two built-in reporting exercises that will give me feedback on the success of the class. I offer free e-mail and phone consultation during and after the courses, which is where I assume I will also hear about successes and failures informally. I will also ask participants what they wish the class had covered after the final online program.