University of Maryland Libraries
Working Paper #1 on Team Management
The Vision of a Team-Based Learning Organization
June 26, 2000
Charles B. Lowry, Dean of Libraries

Prologue:

During the past two years our Libraries have taken several steps towards the restructuring of the organization of our work. The creation of three subject teams has organized the effort of Public Services and Collection Management librarians congruently with the way the University organizes itself and has shown the impact that this can have on the specialized needs of different disciplinary groupings. The re-engineering of reference services of McKeldin and Hornbake Libraries to better accommodate the needs of undergraduates has been successful from the perspective of the users. While we know that this work is incomplete, we also know--because our users have told us--that we are on the right path. Similarly, Technical Services is currently undertaking a top to bottom program review and is in the midst of re-engineering the serials processing. In fact, the preliminary report of our outside consultant team doing the "Diversity and Organizational Culture Survey" of all staff, indicates a strong desire to work in ways that reflect the team-based ethos.

An operational definition of teams is an important part of understanding what the expectations of a self-managed team will be. For instance, one useful definition captures much of the ethos of teamwork:

This organizational change has borne fruit for our community and at the same time has tested our ability to take additional steps. I believe that it is time to expand the use of teams as an organizational strategy for improving library services to the University, and equally important in order to create an adaptive organization that can respond readily to the changing scholarly information landscape. This Working Paper #1 is intended to provide a vision and a set of general operating principles that will point the Libraries as a whole towards this future and suggest how each of us can contribute to success. Subsequent working papers will be aimed at providing explicit direction for concrete programs across the full spectrum of services and operations.

Why have a self-managed team organization?

The simple answer is that it is consonant with the University and University Libraries strategic plans. Perhaps more important though, there are underlying forces which make such an organization imperative. It is well understood that scholarly information essential to the research and teaching enterprise is proceeding through a dramatic transformation that is driven by the use of networked information technology. It is also true that academic libraries are among the most intensively IT-networked organizations within higher education. They are subject to the "transforming" effects of networked IT in the way other organizations have been. It follows that academic libraries--which deal in scholarly information content--will change. They may do so passively buffeted by these external forces. We choose not to respond in this way to the much-talked-about "paradigm shift." Instead, we must seize the opportunities presented by this transformational circumstance that was described a decade ago by Shoshana Zuboff in her book In the Age of the Smart.² In simplest terms, she demonstrated that the organizations most capable of responding effectively were those that:

• understand networked IT environments were a new way of working which brings every employee knowledge, that knowledge is power and that this fact is corrosive to traditional hierarchy;
• recognize that attempts to preserve rigid hierarchy will cause the organization to fail because hierarchy is as dead as Fayol³;
• grasp the imperative of networked IT and fully utilize the "brainpower" at their disposal, which is to say the intelligence of every single staff member through their organizational culture;
• appreciate that there is new work to be done and accordingly old work to rework; and
• act on the fact that the most constructive and fruitful organizational response will be team based.

In the context of libraries in higher education and more specifically the University this means that teams will help us to:

• meet the challenge of curriculum changes, particularly in undergraduate studies;
• collaborate with the teaching faculty to integrate scholarly information effectively into the curriculum;
• create a stronger synergy between scholarly information and research;
• build strongly on opportunities the subject teams have already demonstrated such as CIVICUS, AgNIC, and the Media Fair; and
• adapt to the new initiatives that hold promise for the future such as the Libraries' own Digital Library Organization; innovations in mediation such as applications of the IBM Digital Library and Videocharger for PAL; the opportunities of new distributed architectures that will come with LIMS3; and collaborative efforts like the Maryland Digital Library; the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities and the Electronic Text and Image Center.

The overall design principles⁴ that will guide us in working as a library organization and within teams include:

• customer focus--the Libraries' goal is to provide products and services of high value to customers (i.e., to our students, faculty and administration);
• commitment to quality--the essence of quality is high value and reliability;
• teamwork--the Libraries are focused on teamwork and partnerships;
• best practices--the Libraries identify effective processes and consistently incorporate them into work processes;
• continuous improvement--the Libraries study, measure and analyze the structure of work and focus on the constant improvement of work processes and systems;
• continuous education and training--in a quality "learning" organization everyone is constantly learning and mastering new skills in pursuit of individual and organizational excellence; and
• permanent change--it follows naturally that teams themselves may be re-formulated and changed as we discover the best way to work and the right work to do.

We often hear that we have teams in all aspects of library operations. It is important to understand that teamwork and occasional or unplanned collaboration are not quite the same thing as true team organizations. Some guidance in understanding teams may be found in the Team Handbook. ⁵ In addition to the definition given earlier, some of the operational characteristics of a team will help give the flavor of where we intend to go. A library team is:

• a planned (usually permanent) collaboration expressed through a formal organizational structure intended (in our case) to support a library service or technical function;
• a problem solving group that uses well understood tools (e.g. CQI process re-engineering) to assure that the whole organization remains flexible and responsive to its environment;
• outwardly oriented toward the learning and research mission of the University;
• strongly supportive of the Libraries' mission and tightly integrated in its actions with the Libraries' Strategic Plan ;
• willing and able to experiment vigorously and understand when something fails;
• capable of making decisions within its scope that are fact based and rationally driven; and
• capable of arriving at sound decisions through effective group process and consensus.

What a "self managed team" is not?

It is equally important to understand that a team is not:

• an island unto itself, free to act out of the context of the Libraries larger mission;
• a parliamentary voting democracy;
• an independent agency within the Libraries';
• a cozy place to do what I want and what makes me feel comfortable; or
• a collection of lone-wolf/solo acts.

Who leads and what's my job?

Staff at all levels will be on a team and are responsible for the roles of leadership and membership at different times. Some individuals will be on more than one team and may have a "matrix" reporting relationship within the administrative structure. There are some basic corollaries:

• Meetings are part of this work, but we all have responsibility for making them work--for following our principles of meeting management and communication.
• We will continue to have an administrative structure, but the organization chart will become an "accountability" chart and reflect the way we talk to the University and the outside world.
• The team chart will reflect the interaction of technical and service functions to meet the Libraries' mission.
• Teams will become the way we work.The guiding statement developed by the Work Culture Task Force captures the spirit of the way we want to work.
• Individuals will have specific job assignments, but these must be viewed as evolving when the need for change is identified by a team.
• Individuals will have managerial assignments, but will exercise leadership assignments in a way that reflects the team environment--coaching, mentoring, challenging, etc. Management assignments too can be more ephemeral, particularly for library faculty.
• In a team environment, everyone must take responsibility for his or her own performance and for the performance of the team. This responsibility will become part of the annual performance expectation.
• Many of us will find that our jobs change, some drastically. All of us can expect to have jobs and homes within the Libraries' team structure.

In today's dynamic and rapidly changing environment for libraries organizational leadership will continue to be necessary, but to meet the complex set of challenges it will change fundamentally the way it leads.

• Using strategic vision to motivate and inspire
• Empowering employees at all levels
• Accumulating and sharing internal knowledge
• Gathering and integrating external information
• Challenging the status quo and enabling creativity. ⁶

How many and what kind of teams will we have?

There is no predetermined number of teams. Indeed, experience in other academic libraries indicates that team structures tend to evolve as teams do the work of making work more efficient. While some teams are very stable and long-lived, others may change continuously. We may expect to have four general types of teams, but this should not be taken as a final outline. They include:

• Program teams(e.g., user education) and operations/technical teams (e.g., access services) will exist in all divisions of the Libraries and will be focused on a variety of services and operations. Membership will comprise staff and library faculty.
• Subject teams already are cross divisional. They will exist in most divisions of the Libraries and will be oriented toward the work of library faculty with the teaching faculty to provide needed scholarly information for both instruction and research. Membership will be comprised principally (but not exclusively) of library faculty.
• Cross-functional teams will usually bridge divisions or departments to be sure that work that cuts across divisions and departments is effectively managed. Membership will be staff and library faculty and some team members may be full-time on the team while others will have part-time membership.
• Temporary teams will be assembled when a task is better assigned to an "expert group" than to an extant team. They will usually focus on short-term problems and will be given a specific charge to complete a limited task in a limited amount. Membership will be assembled from among those best equipped to deal with the explicit task of the team.

What about faculty status for librarians?

The University System of Maryland Board of Regents (April 7, 2000) established a new personnel policy giving librarians non-tenure track faculty status. This policy must proceed through a local implementation that will flesh out the practices and policies for librarians as faculty at the University of Maryland. However, we already have a promotion policy for librarians, which reflects performance goals similar to what they will be in the future. Job performance will naturally be the significant component and will emphasize the contribution to classroom learning and research expected of librarians. Similarly, librarians will have service roles and contributions to scholarship, both of which will be defined for the library context. Some teams (e.g., subject teams) will be composed almost exclusively of library faculty. Others will be a mix of librarians and staff. Whatever the composition--collaboration in work using fact-based decision tools will be their hallmark.

What about LIMS 3?

The procurement of a new integrated library system for all of USM is actually the perfect opportunity to revisit all work routines and to insure that we are "doing the right things" not merely "doing things right." Our expectation as an organization is that the new system will offer countless opportunities to improve work across all of the Libraries' divisions. Team based management will offer the opportunity to do this with full staff participation and to maximize the advantages of the leading edge system we expect to acquire.

What about skills training and facilitation resources?

The Libraries have established significant core resources already that are essential to changing the way we learn and work together. These include the training program in the Planning and Administrative Services Division (established in 1997) which provides a variety of training opportunities across a broad array of skill needs. It also manages required training for all staff--for instance, meeting/communication skills and sexual harassment awareness. These programs will continue and will grow. Our investment in them is only a start.

It has also been the experience of other libraries that have moved to team-based management that consultants are needed--both internal and external--who navigate the whole organization. We have already hired Maureen Sullivan from the Association of Research Libraries Office of Leadership and Management Services to provide external services. We may expect to acquire more external consulting services when the need arises. But, this is not enough. The Libraries must also have consulting resources continuously available to support the teams through facilitation and to train them in the use of basic team tools for decision -making (e.g. CQI toolkit). We already have staff members who have received the University's training and are able to step into these roles. I have asked Sue Baughman to step into this role for at least a year and begin providing this internal resource. In the role of Assistant to the Dean of Libraries for Organizational Development, she will be the first member of the "Team/Team." She will report directly to me in this effort. We expect to have permanent consulting capabilities in the Libraries to do this work. Some individuals will facilitate/consult full time, others will be members of the "Team/Team" working part-time in this role. All will receive training in this work and will serve the Libraries other teams in their own development and work re-design efforts.

Postscript and next steps:

The University of Maryland Libraries are at a crossroads in their history. How well we choose our path will define whether we take on a full (and appropriate) role in the campus scholarly information exchange or are marginalized. The campus expects us to do the former.

I have often said to colleagues that we are not in the business of preserving libraries or the work of libraries as we have known them. If we choose this path we will surely fail our students, our faculty and ourselves. Most importantly, we will fail our University because, if we cannot adapt and change, the scholarly information exchange will be diminished. On the other hand, I believe we must find our way based on historic values. Faced as we are with a dramatic paradigm shift caused by information technology, the challenge to libraries has been well defined by Crawford and Gorman.

• remember that human service to human beings and communities is the prime reason for a library to exist;
• recognize that knowledge and understanding, not data and information, are the central concerns of libraries;
• defend the central ethical concerns of librarianship--equality of access to materials and resources; service; cooperation; and intellectual freedom;
• take pride in the way libraries and librarians have honored their mission for centuries and accept the weight of that mission. ⁷

• seeking answers to problems rather than seeking applications of interesting new technology;
• weighing the cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit, and, above all, impact on service of any proposed innovation;
• rethinking the program, service, or workflow that is being automated rather than automating what one has. ⁸

Through the summer, I will work with the Library Executive Council, Sue Baughman, Maureen Sullivan and all staff to design an approach to organization that will help us to launch the broad use of teams and training necessary to make them work effectively. We will establish as one step a WEB-based "Dean's Suggestion Box" for all staff to communicate directly with me your individual thoughts, suggestions for change and concerns about the work at hand. As we begin this "journey" I want to emphasize that we expect to become what has been called a "learning organization." I think it is natural for us all to ask how long this will take. The answer is simple--forever--because a learning organization surely will continue to change and to adapt to better fulfill its mission. The University of Maryland as a whole has certainly done this and done it dramatically and well over the past decade. We must live up to the challenge of providing access to scholarly information in a "tier one" research institution that is highly adaptive and, therefore, constantly placing new demands on its Libraries.

Note: cited works works will be placed on reserve for easy staff access.

1. Moshen Attaran and Tai T. Nguyen, "Self-Managed Work Team," Industrial Management, 41 (July/August, 1999): 24.

2. For an academic library specific example of Zuboff's ideas see, Charles B. Lowry, "Management Issues in the 'Informated' Library," book chapter in Gary M. Pitkin (ed.). Information Management and Organizational Change in Higher Education: Impact on Libraries. Meckler, 1993: 100-131.

3. Like Frederick Winslow Taylor, Henri Fayol was one of the early leaders of the classical management "school." Briefly stated his principles of management characterized the classical bureaucracy--division of work, authority, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination of individual interest, remuneration, centralization, the scalar chain, order, equity, stability of personnel tenure, initiative, and esprit de corps. Certainly not all of these principles are inimical with self managed team organizations of today, but their key emphasis on vertical control and unity of command have fallen into disuse. See for instance, Robert D. Stueart and Robert Taylor Eastlick, Library Management, (Littleton Colorado : Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1977): 19-21.

4. These principles were drawn from documentation presented by Emory University at the "Living in the Future III," Conference, Tucson, Arizona, April 26-29, 2000.

5. Peter R. Scholtes, et al, The Team Handbook (Madison, Wisconsin: Oriel Incorporated, second edition, 1996): 1-16; see also, Milan Moravic, "The Well-managed SMT," Management Review, 87 (June 1998): 56-59; Dean Elmuti, "Sustaining High Performance Through Self-Managed Work Teams," Industrial Management, 41 (July/August 1999): 4-8.

6. Gregory G. Dess and Joseph C. Picken, "Changing Roles: Leadership in the 21^st Century," Organizatonal Dynamics, (Winter 2000): 19.

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Last Revised: 26 June, 2000