Rebecca Jones, Managing Partner, Dysart and Jones Associates
- Can we talk? How’s your value measuring up?
- Measures begin and end with conversations
- Measure new things in new ways
- Listen
- Context
- Define your success
- Listen, then learn to convey
Meaningful measures:
- those that matter to you and to your stakeholders
- Demonstrate that the library makes a difference
- Focus attention on what is being donne and what is most important for the organization.
- Measures are for decision-making
- Are critical for managing, planning and decision-making
- Are organization-dependent and must be connected from strategic directives to employees
- they focus on what you are doing.
From a morning session: if what you’re doing isn’t getting results, why do you continue to do it?
Underlying assumptions
- Joe Matthews (Measuring for Results book)
- We don’t have a culture of assessment
- difficult and complex
- most measures indicate past performance
- no cause-and-effect relationship between measures
- Performance measures quantitative, but library outcomes are largely quantitative
- Identifying and illustrating depends on conversations (first conversation shouldn’t be when measures are presented) — go when you want something, not bringing them something)
Measures: are, by definition, based on a “beginning” or monitors results against an agreed-to objective or value
Clarity.
The fewer stats you try to convey the better you will be listened to.
What difference did the library make?
Successful organizations:
- clarity of purpose
- understand their culture
- performance measurement
- system that fits that culture
An effective measurement system:
- Gauges how well your strategies are progressing
- Focuses on what matters most to library’s success (Understanding what’s being accomplished rather than on what’s being performed) NOT stats sheet; picture that you tell a story; a paragraph that tells the impact on various segments of comunity.
- Uses a common language with staff and ecision-makers
- Specifies owner
- Is valid
There’s more to value than just the bottom line (marketing from Harrah’s casinos): tangible values; soft tangible values; intangible values.
Informal survey
- What measures demonstrate the library’s value to its users, students/faculty, university, community or clients?
- How do you identify the measures?
- Have you changed them in the past 2-5 years?
Medical Library Association (Federal Libraries Section of the Medical Library Association study coming out).
Studies have replaced statistics in importance.
Stories eat stats for breakfast.
Increasingly, stories have replaced stats:
- Measures agreed to &/or aligned with decision-maker measures
- Follow-up debriefs with a few people for impact or “difference made” discussions
- Time saved + costs avoided: Possibly ideas generated.
- Internal monitoring vs. decision-maker value
- Decreasing
Usage stats —
- looking at them through different binoculars.
- Who has been using what?
- Customer satisfaction
Balanced scorecard : connection between strategies and measures (Goals and Measures for each of these)
- Customer Perspective: how do we look to our clients?
- Innovation Perspective: Â how can we improve and create value?
- Internal Perspective: how do we look to our funders or stakeholders
- Financial Perspective: what must we excel at?
Benefits of Scorecard
- “a very clear understanding of what drives value within your area and what doesn’t”
- “greater insight into senior management’s (larger organization) strategic plans”
- “and a better knowledge not only of the strategic role you play within the organization but how you can enhance that role and sit at the decision-making table”
[Missed a good bit of the rest of the session. the stories eat stats comment got me thinking about Kan-ed situation, HB2390 in Kansas, and the Kan-ed impact stories.]
Interpret the data — take it outside the library for others to look at and interpret.
Communicate the results
Focus on the few critical solutions
Measures matter: what we do matters
Studies to link to later:
- OCLC study
- ARL study
- Free Library of Philadelphia CBA