In order for the libraries to develop, grow, and remain an excellent resource to students, faculty, and staff, library staff need to acquire the critical skills and the tools that will allow them to become a key player in a learning organization. The Library Executive Council (LEC) commissioned the authors to write this paper to describe how we could accomplish this. As the authors began sharing ideas on how to write this paper and what to include, we agreed that a comprehensive learning and education program is one of the most critical elements that must be developed. That decided, we also realized that this paper should cover three areas: (1) a brief description of a learning organization so that we share an understanding of what we are trying to become; (2) an outline of assessment criteria to help us realize when we become one; and (3) a list of initial content areas for the learning and education program. Following this discussion we present the next steps.

A Learning Organization

Peter M. Senge describes a learning organization as an organization "where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together" (Senge 1990). Since 1990 when Senge published The Fifth Discipline, many words of wisdom about learning organizations have been published. There is much for library staff to learn from these ideas as we begin to incorporate the disciplines into our organization.

At the core of a learning organization are five disciplines of the learning environment. Senge stresses that disciplines are to be practiced. These disciplines cannot be learned and achieved without practice over time. The five disciplines are interrelated and include:

• Personal Mastery: learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire, and creating an organizational environment which encourages all its members to develop themselves toward the goals they choose.
• Mental Models: reflecting upon, continually clarifying, and improving our internal pictures of the world, and seeing how they shape our actions and decisions. Mental models are the assumptions and stories we carry with us about others and ourselves. Mental models help us function but do not always correlate with reality.
• Shared Vision: building a sense of commitment in a group, by developing shared images of the future we seek to create, and the principles and guiding practices by which we hope to get there. Everyone contributes to the shared vision. Creating a vision is an evolutionary process.
• Team Learning: transforming conversational and collective thinking skills, so that groups of people can reliably develop intelligence and ability greater than the sum of individual members' talents. This is our collective capacity to do something. In team learning there is less authority and more emphasis on collaboration and facilitation. There is a great deal of trust among and between members.
• Systems Thinking: a way of thinking about, and a language for describing and understanding, the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. This discipline helps us see how to change systems more effectively, and to act more in tune with the larger processes of the natural and economic world. Systems thinking serves as the cornerstone for the other disciplines (Senge 1994).

Learning about these disciplines will help library staff develop an understanding of themselves and the organization. In addition, the key guiding principles outlined in Working Paper # 1 draw attention to the environment the Libraries want to create:

• focus on the customer
• commitment to quality
• teamwork and partnerships
• incorporation of best practices and continuous improvement
• continuous learning and education
• continuous change when it leads to improvement

An overarching element of these guiding principles is the notion of continuous learning and education. The UM Libraries strive to build an environment where the focus is on the individuals who make up the organization as well as the organization itself. In order to begin, the Libraries must develop a culture of learning within the library system. All staff are key partners in this endeavor. For the learning initiative to be a success, each staff member must take individual responsibility for personal growth and learning that works toward a role each member has in shaping the organization. There is an important connection between who we are as individuals and the effectiveness and success of our libraries (Shaughnessy 1995). Becoming a learning organization requires a commitment to the ongoing process of learning, growth, and development that is shared by all participants.

Assessment of a Learning Organization

Creating the environment to become a learning organization is as important as knowing when you become one. Both processes require an ongoing effort of growth and change. Belasen, in Leading the Learning Organization, mentions qualities used to characterize a learning organization. If the UM Libraries strive to reach these qualities we should begin to see that we are:

• Learning collaboratively, openly, and across boundaries
• Valuing how we learn as well as what we learn
• Investing in staying ahead of the learning curve in our industry
• Gaining a competitive edge by learning faster and smarter than competitors
• Turning data into useful knowledge quickly and at the right time and place
• Enabling every employee to feel that every experience provides him or her with a chance to learn something potentially useful, even if only for leveraging future learning
• Exhibiting little fear and defensiveness, and learning from what goes wrong ("failure" learning) and what goes right ("success" learning)
• Taking risks while simultaneously avoiding jeopardizing the basic security of the organization
• Investing in experimental and seemingly tangential learning
• Supporting people and teams who want to pursue action-learning projects
• Depoliticizing learning by not penalizing individuals or groups for sharing information and conclusions

In addition, as a learning organization, the Libraries will begin to operate in a different manner and will:

• Use learning to reach its goals
• Help people value the effects of their learning on their organization
• Avoid repeating the same mistakes
• Share information in ways that prompt appropriate action
• Link individual performance with organizational performance
• Tie rewards to key measures of performance
• Take in a lot of environmental information at all times
• Create structures and procedures that support the learning process
• Foster ongoing and orderly dialogues
• Make it safer for people to share openly and take risks (Belasen 2000)

Our learning environment and the criteria used to judge success become the foundation. The Learning Curriculum adds the content to the foundation.

Learning Curriculum

The analytical thinking and planning of the Libraries' Learning Curriculum incorporates various content categories that focus on individual and organizational advancement. The plan provides a strategy that allows us to bring everyone into the culture of learning and organizational development, while attending to individual needs and strengths.

The following five content categories provide the foundation of the curriculum, but the development of the content will call upon staff to contribute their best thinking. Several strategies including focus groups as well as small and large group discussions will be employed to incorporate staff input into the design of each workshop or activity.

I. Introduction: Development of the Organization

This first module will introduce the foundation of our organizational structure. All other modules will be built upon this base. Included in the introductory series would be workshops and activities related to shared visioning, systems thinking, organizational learning, change management, the value of meetings and training, and diversity awareness.

II. Development of Self and Team

To become a system comprised of self-managed teams, we must provide the tools and knowledge to support staff effectiveness as a team member. Important topics to be addressed in this module might be team member roles and the multiple stages of team development, effective communication, mental models of development and change, decision-making and problem-solving, effective meetings, time and stress management, evaluation and review process, and coaching.

III. Exploring Leadership and Followership

What is the definition of a leader? How can I also be a follower? Module three looks at ways to behave as a leader and a follower in our team environment, because we must know how to take the role of each. Intensive training in the following areas is important: being a leader and less boss, shared leadership, decision-making, and facilitation skills.

IV. Defining Customer Service

Module four addresses broad concepts of customer service philosophy and the attributes of library customers. It will also explore strategies for maximizing customer service through the use of teams, problem solving techniques, and enhanced internal and external communication. The following areas are topics for learning: defining quality, working with customers, how to get to yes, and conflict resolution skills.

V. Self-awareness and Improvement

A variety of workshops will address individual skills to help staff become more competent and knowledgeable, and other workshops will address organizational or campus concerns. Examples include computer skills, project management, presentation skills, safety and security measures, and sexual harassment prevention program.

Evaluation of the Learning Curriculum will be important and this process will become a set of interrelated tasks, each building upon the previous one. The process assesses the total value of a learning program and each workshop with respect to individual staff needs, the cost/benefit to the organization, and the value to the organization's goals. When staff complete learning activities and programs and become more expert in desired skills, learn new processes or gain new knowledge, it raises the level of individual competency, and thus, an organizational competency. A collective gain of new competencies and knowledge also affects the system's culture and identity by transforming it into a learning organization.

Creating and implementing a learning curriculum that will help us reach our goals will be an exciting and challenging opportunity to do something that this organization has not attempted previously. The framework for creating the learning organization and the learning curriculum to support it is made up of components. Each component is important and connected to build a strong system. The framework, focusing on six areas, will guide the Libraries' learning and education:

• organizational development
• staff learning and development
• strategic planning and measurement
• leadership and followership
• self-managed teams
• continuous learning, improvement and program review

Organizational Development
Organization development (OD) is defined as "the planned process of developing an organization to be more effective in accomplishing its desired goals. It is distinguished from human resource development in that HRD focuses on the personal growth of individuals within the organization, while OD focuses on developing the strengths, systems, and processes within the organization to improve organizational effectiveness." (Russo 1999) The goal of OD is to promote and support change by focusing on process and the goals and values of an organization.

Organizational learning initiatives are a component of the Libraries' Learning Curriculum. These initiatives will support the Libraries' development by drawing attention to problems and challenges within the organization and identifying ways to address them. By focusing on operating units, departments, and divisions, the library staff can begin to shape their team learning and systems thinking. The initiatives will also support personal as well as the organizational needs. (Phillips 1991)

The UM Libraries as an organization has an identity and culture. The identity lets the outside community know who we are while the culture embodies the attitudes and values of the members in the organization. One affects the other in respect to change or improvement. Any change is an evolutionary process that will take place over time. OD plays a key role in this process and serves as thread to weave the other structural areas together.

Staff Learning and Development
Staff learning and development differs from continuing education because it is geared to the specific needs of an institution. (Trotta 1995) Staff learning initiatives include a broad range of activities that can be position related or career related; they may address quality of work life or provide a means of personal enrichment. Workshops can support staff to be more productive, more efficient, and more effective. They should have a connection to realistic situations in the Libraries and add value to the Libraries' strategic vision.

Staff learning initiatives are also a component of the Libraries' Learning Curriculum and partners with organizational development. Together they work to advance the organization and staff to where they want to be. Staff learning workshops, for example, can incorporate new skill sets that are learned and applied to a number of areas: process improvement, development of self awareness, attitudes and communication skills, or decision-making. Individuals who participate in the workshops become the facilitators in changing the way business is accomplished in the Libraries.

Strategic Planning and Measurement
Strategic planning plays a key role in increasing organizational effectiveness. The UM Libraries use strategic planning to provide direction and context for our growth and services. This planning is important because it is built on an understanding of the customer and the environment. Customer feedback, competing pressures within and outside the Libraries, and library staff input support the necessity of planning. The development of the organization is the result of the changes driven by the organization's strategy. If we plan well, we are making choices that best fit with institutional and external opportunities plus make the best use of our resources and enable a viable future.

As the UM Libraries' organization evolves, planning becomes more important as do good facts about the library system. Data, facts, and results undergird all planning and development and help us make fact-based decisions. A management information system is essential to obtain, organize, evaluate and maintain information regarding the Libraries' activities. An assessment plan developed by the Management Information Systems (MIS) Office for the UM Libraries will be extremely useful ensuring that the Libraries are regularly evaluating our products and services. The plan will include methods for assessing needs, appropriate tools and frequency of review cycles, as well as methods for identifying new information needs.

Leadership and Followership
Leadership behavior is exhibited in a variety of ways: as a contributing member of a team, unit, department, committee or task force not just as a team leader, a leader of a process improvement team, or the head of a unit or department. A leader does not have to be a supervisor, a manager, or an administrator. At the same time, all library staff are followers. This is a powerful concept that all library staff fill both of these roles. To understand the principle of followership we go to the definition described in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) publication titled, The Shared Leadership Principle: Creating Leaders Throughout the Organization. A follower is someone who:

• "manages himself well;
• is committed to the organization and to a purpose, principle, or person outside himself;
• builds his competence and focuses his efforts for maximum impact; and
• is courageous, honest and credible." (Deiss and Sullivan 1998)

The relationship between a leader and a follower is described as a symbiotic one and the time or opportunity to be in one or the other role depends on the situation or the organizational need.

Every library staff member is expected to be a leader at times and a follower at other times. Developing an understanding of the characteristics of leadership and followership and the skills needed for library staff to fill these roles will be important in guiding our way to a learning organization. For some staff these will be new skills to learn and practice. Learning to become a leader and less of a "boss" or "supervisor" will be a change in behavior just as learning to become a follower and letting someone else take the lead. Developing these characteristics of both will be one of our next steps. The Learning Curriculum will help us develop the appropriate skills.

Self-Managed Teams
In Working Paper # 1, Dean Charles Lowry talks about the changing environments in academic libraries and higher education and how the UM Libraries must change in order to more fully meet the needs of the University. He further states that self-managed teams are an organizational strategy for dealing with these changing environments and improving library services. A learning organization and self-managed teams can exist one without the other but work even better hand in hand. Mastering the five disciplines of a learning organization takes time and practice and includes awareness of self and the organization. This mastery also involves development of tools that will strengthen the skills needed by library staff to be effective members of self-managed teams.

Continuous Learning, Improvement and Program Review
Learning as an organization allows library staff to learn together and to support the Libraries' growth. Assessment and evaluation of what we do and how we accomplish our tasks to meet our mission becomes a critical component of our organizational development. Learning can take many shapes. It takes place in a variety of settings and through many methods. Awareness, reflection, and dialogue are important learning tools as well as learning a new skill.

The Meeting Management and Communication Skills Workshop conducted over the past several years is one example of continuous learning. It has been and will continue to be an opportunity for the organization to improve our meetings and the way we communicate with one another. The Diversity Brown Bag discussions are another example of learning where staff are encouraged to explore a variety of diversity issues.

Continuous quality improvement of processes and methods will become a standard way of operation in our libraries. Ongoing review of the activities we perform through Process Improvement Teams will ensure we are doing the correct process for the correct task. Collecting and analyzing data, determining the root cause of a problem, and testing our assumptions are tools we will use on a routine basis. Customer feedback is another important tool that we will employ regularly and through the support of the MIS Office, we will improve our ability to gather this data. Process Improvement Teams charged with working on a specific issue or problem will be trained in tools helpful in developing improvement strategies. Other opportunities for library staff to learn these tools will be made available as part of the Libraries' Learning Curriculum.

Program review is another way to identify areas where improvements are needed. It is an intensive analysis of current practice and procedure with attention paid to where duplicate efforts or tasks exist. The Technical Services program review is the first large-scale review in the Libraries. This comprehensive look will result in a stronger and more viable program that is better equipped to meet internal and external customers' needs.

So What Happens Next?

The UM Libraries began the journey to become a learning organization several years ago. Much has changed but there is much work for all library staff to do. This is what we know so far. Dean Lowry says participation is a requirement - there are no players on the sidelines. Every library staff member will play the roles of leader and follower. Together we will create the learning curriculum that will teach all staff the skills they need to be members of teams and to improve the way we operate as an organization. This is a long-term commitment of time, heart and energy. Meetings will be an important way to manage some of these important changes.

Library staff have done a lot of talking over the past several months. We have shared ideas, concerns and wishes. Many of us are ready and anxious to get going. Here are some things on the calendar so far:

1. Focus groups of randomly selected staff will be invited to meet with Baughman and Hubbard to critique the Learning Curriculum and develop implementation strategies (January 2001).
2. Baughman and Hubbard will meet with Maureen Sullivan in late January to write curriculum objectives and develop content.
3. Ongoing staff training activities such as Meeting Management and Safety and Security Training will be held over the winter months.
4. New training components will be unveiled in the Spring.

Having a clear vision with a shared understanding of our goals supported by a comprehensive learning program gives us a solid foundation to move forward. The organization is committed to and excited about moving to the next level of growth and change.

References

Belasen, Alan T., Leading the Learning Organization (New York: State University of New York, 2000): pp. 296-297.

Deiss, Kathryn J., and Maureen Sullivan. "The Shared Leadership Principle: Creating Leaders Throughout the Organization," in Issues and Trends in Diversity, Leadership and Career Development, edited by DeEtta Jones. (Washington DC: Association of Research Libraries, May 1998): p. 2.

Phillips, Jack J., Training Evaluation and Measurement Methods 2nd Edition (Houston: Gulf Publishing Company, 1991): pp. 9-10.

Russo, Cat Sharpe. Ed. Principles of Organization Development (Alexandra, Virginia: ASTD, 1999 rev.ed): p. 1.

Senge, Peter M., Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard B. Ross, and Bryan J. Smith. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (New York: Doubleday, 1994): pp. 6-7.

Senge, Peter M., The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1990): p. 3.

Shaughnessy, Thomas W., "Key Issue: Achieving Peak Performance in Academic Libraries," Journal of Academic Librarianship (May 1995): p. 157.

Trotta, Marcia. Successful Staff Development (New York: Neal Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1995), no 55: p. 10.

Library staff may also want to review the following: UM Libraries' Mission, Vision, Values, Strategic Plan and the Work Culture Task Force Report.