by Dennie Heye
Everyone in the room now really is distracted. Time for my grand finale. I wait until the presenter clicks to the slide with the agenda for today and then snap my fingers at the presenter. He grinds his teeth and asks: “Do you have a question?”
I get up from my seat, lean over the table and point my finger at him: “Well, I represent the entire north-east region for cross-business work streams and I just came back from a meeting with our CEO. He made it very clear that the new work stream alignment leadership board should be consulted about restructuring plans! Your meeting undermines that corporate decision and I am baffled by your blatant attempt to waste corporate resources!”
I look around as if I am Bruce Banner who is about to turn into the Hulk. I yank out the power cord, shove the laptop and the power cord in my suitcase and stride towards the door. At the door, I turn around and say: “If I were you guys, I'd reconsider this whole project and come up with a darn good explanation how you will align this with our global work stream targets. I expect a memo by tomorrow!” With that, I slam the door shut and leave.
Within five minutes I have changed back into my normal clothes and pop over to my buddy's office. “Man, you were great”, he says, “the look on their faces when you slammed the door… !” And then the best part begins: watch what happens next in the meeting room. Since every meeting room is equipped with the latest in videoconferencing, there are a couple of cameras in the room. So with a bag of Doritos and a few cans of Pepsi we have a wonderful afternoon.
The one were doom is spelled
It is Monday morning in the library and too early for trouble. Yet, I have the unmistakable feeling that something bad is about to happen. I switch on Pandora, the streaming music website and the first song it plays is Elvis Presley's “Trouble”.
Hmmm.
I open the mail and pick up a new book that has to be catalogued: “The 13 mistakes of highly ineffective people”.
Hmmm.
I quickly touch my Nancy Pearl[7] action figure to prevent further signs of trouble. But it is too late. On my desk is a post-it note from my manager: “please come to my office ASAP to discuss great opportunity for career boost”. That comes down to: “I want to delegate a task which is either very unpopular or too complex for me, so I'm giving it to you. If you achieve the goal, I take the credit, if you fail – you're the scapegoat”.
After an hour I come back from the meeting with my manager and all the signs were right. I have been put in charge of project “Document Object Oriented Management” (DOOM). A recent IT user survey has pointed out that end users can't find the documents they need. Of course I could tell everyone why:
Users don't know what they are looking for;
If they think they know, they are looking in the wrong places;
If they are looking in the right place, they use a maximum of two words;
They can't be bothered to read the help or work through the 5-minute tutorial;
But hey, the IT managers will not take simple explanations as an answer. They will take any excuse to build another system. Which is just the opposite of what the users want. But then, IT managers are not there for the end users of course.
To cut a long story short, in a recent meeting with all the IT head honchos project DOOM was initiated which should put an end to users not finding documents. I have been tasked to organize a workshop with the key stakeholders to align vision, outline a road map with milestones and define clear deliverables linked to business priorities. In short: it has as much chance of succeeding as a snowball in hell.
But then, I can at least have some fun with the workshop… So I invite the following key stakeholders to pitch against each other:
The search maestro: convinced that all users need is a concept-based search engine, and metadata is completely useless and outdated;
The records management evangelist: everything is a business record and therefore should be declared as a record, requiring 37 metadata fields, cross referenced with endless master data lists;
The document workflow preacher: metadata is useful, but should be stored in the document and search engines will be redundant when people just follow the workflow;
My passive aggressive assistant Sue, representing the library: computers are evil. Everything should be stored on paper in duplicate and indexed in her rolodex using the 1978 edition of the indexing bible.
All the participants think everyone else is wrong and they are deaf for other viewpoints. But they have more in common: they will repeat their ideology until they see blue in the face and need a whiteboard with a marker to make their point.
And I have put only one whiteboard and one marker in the meeting room. Let the games begin!
The one were profit is at a loss
It is Monday afternoon, 3.35 PM in the library and I am just about to take a nap behind the reference works section in the library when I get an e-mail from my boss:
“I want you to attend this seminar about how to turn libraries into profit centers – a great opportunity to create a real paradigm shift! I expect a proposal with best practices related to our high level strategy with quality-assured guesstimates.”
(Sigh) So the good news is I get to spend a day and a half at a nice hotel on company expense. But I have to come up with a proposal that looks real enough, yet will not encourage my boss to really believe that libraries can be profit centers. A library is a shrine and treasure of wisdom, a sanctuary of stillness and the center of tranquility. Not a profit center.
I close the door of the library, put on the 'closed' sign (“library closed for upgrading to ISBN-13”) and hammer away at my keyboard.
FROM BOOKS TO DOLLARS – THE HADES LIBRARY AS PROFIT CENTER
Based on best practices gathered at the seminar, which I benchmarked with industry peers, I have come up with the following ideas to have the library perform at an economic optimum.
1. Use contextual advertising on the corporate intranet;
2. Sell confidential company reports on eBay;
3. Put advertising on all scanned company records;
4. Sell copies of our telephone directory to headhunters and competitors;
5. Rip out the last page of every book and when asked for, sell them;
6. Also, remove the conclusion of every electronic article ordered and charge for it;
7. Charge $1 per minute when calling the library.
Good, I got that done. Now I am off to the seminar where I can skip all the presentations and workshops. This leaves me more time to catch up on listening to audio novels, check out the hotel pool bar and in general “network”.
The one with a cunning plan
It is Tuesday afternoon 4 PM in the library and I have unplugged the phones and shut the door. I am in love. Head over heals. For the past three days I cannot think straight, every waking moment is spent dreaming and longing. But it is an impossible love.
The object of my affection is the iDop Feel, the new multimedia-lifestyle device that has been launched earlier last week after months of speculation about features, colors, name and price. The iDop is everything I want and more. It has a 5 mega pixel camera (ideal to create hi-res photos for blackmailing), Wifi and an internet browser (so I can check out Flickr's stupid library signs stream during lunch), an MP3 player (so I can listen to "Tales of a librarian" by Tori Amos and the audio book of Melvil Dewey's life), a video player (so I can watch bootlegs of the Australian comedy "The Librarians"), a lightweight yet powerful instant messenger (so I can gossip with other library bloggers), the most advanced photo browsing software (which on the fly removes wrinkles, grey hairs and goofy smiles), gigabytes of storage space and (drum roll) a near-perfect e-book reader. Gasp. With this device, I'd never have to talk to another human being or get bored!
But alas, Perfection also has a price tag. In the case of the iDop Feel, that price is way over my budget. But I want one. I need one. I must have one. It would be my precious!
If only I could persuade my
boss to buy me one. Hmmmm. Now, that's an idea.
So to quote Baldrick from Blackadder: "I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel."
I start off by calling one of the managers in the Knowledge & Learning Department. That department is the brainchild of one of the vice presidents and is fighting for power with IT, which I report up to. Both departments claim to own "knowledge management", or to be more precise: the obscene budget for knowledge management, a concept so vague you can fund many projects with dizzy acronyms and non-measurable outcomes. A bit like marketing.
Anyway, I entice him to play a pawn in my new game:
"Hi there, did you get the memo about the enhanced knowledge facilitation paradigm shift program the IT VP started? I think you guys should be included in this… ."
"Woah there, what's that?"
"Well, I just got this memo about how IT will 'shape the company's tacit knowledge retention curve by clustering organization wide wisdom sharing sources on a single device… "
"Could you send me a copy of that memo? Because I am sure the Knowledge Officer would be interested in that".
And of course I am more than happy to share a copy of that fabricated memo by sharing the link in our document management system. The next step is to make a copy of that memo, but attribute it to the Knowledge & Learning Department. Then I am on the phone to the assistant of the IT VP:
"Hi there, I was just wondering why IT wasn't mentioned in the memo about the enhanced knowledge facilitation paradigm shift program from the Knowledge & Learning Department?"
"Woah, hang on there - what memo?"
"Well, I just got this memo about how the Knowledge & Learning department will 'shape the company's tacit knowledge retention curve by clustering organization wide wisdom sharing sources on a single device… "
"That's not their job - IT is responsible for knowledge devices! Send me a copy of that memo and I'll escalate this".
Since I am the all-powerful admin of our document management system, I can see the flurry of forwarding and comments about the memo in the system. It looks like both IT and Knowledge & Learning want to own this project by claiming they are way ahead of the other.
So I innocently pop over to my manager's office, who looks desperate: "Those fuzzy wuzzy knowledge maestros fooled us again. I have just heard the Board wants to fund their proposal for a feasibility study regarding a new portable knowledge device… "
"Well, what if we did not only have a proposal for a feasibility study… but an actual working prototype… . with all of the organization’s knowledge in audio, video and text integrated in a touch display, wirelessly linked to our infrastructure and loaded with the virtual library?"
"Librarian, are you for real? I don’t have months and ten thousands of dollars to beat the knowledge department!"
"Well, actually I could put this together for a mere 900 dollars and three undisturbed days in an offsite secret facility. I promise you can demonstrate it next Monday at the interdepartmental project proposal meeting."
That explains why I am now in a five star hotel, all expenses paid and lying on a king size bed with my iDop Feel. This morning I loaded it with a random selection of business records, a complete backup of the intranet, all the recorded speeches by the IT VP, our collection of e-books and a local copy of the Wikipedia. So I now have 2.5 days left on company paid time to start this romance…
The one with a mess up
It’s Monday, a little after lunch and my creativity is working overtime. This morning my manager told me he had a big, important assignment for me that would look good on my resume. Well, it turned out that an industry IT event was taking place and the chief IT manager was invited to speak about our company’s web 2.0 strategy. Since the chief IT was occupied on that day (a golf clinic has priority of course), the assignment was delegated to the senior IT strategy manager. Who delegated it because it wasn’t prestigious enough. And so, after several levels of delegation I was asked to present about “web version 2, portals, content mess ups and other interesting stuff to show how fab we are in Hades”. And then they trusted me to put together a presentation, which would not need approval as long as I did not reveal secrets.
Ah well. I put everything on hold for this important assignment. I shut the door of the library (sign on the door with “library closed for MARC[8] records audit”). I then gave everyone all permissions on the document management system, so no one would bother me to request permission for folders and documents. I redirected all my e-mail, phone and instant messaging to my passive aggressive assistant Sue, who will reply to everything very friendly like: “that is your problem”, “that is not of your concern” and “did you check Google?”
So after several cappuccinos, the entire Bill Joel box set and a bag of M&M’s, here’s my outline for the presentation titled “Portal to Hades: the future of business driven strategic information and service architecture synergies”:
1. Hades will speed up performance reviews by automatically creating profiles of the employee’s performance. In one report, the supervisor can see
- The amount of e-mail sent and received, split per topic and automatically classified as personal or business;
- Candid photos of the employee’s behavior at office parties;
- A summary of their Internet search history;
- And a breakdown of their Internet download activity;
2. Work-life balance is a core value for Hades. We want our employees to focus on their personal development, linked to Hades business priorities. Finding a partner is a very time-consuming and stressful activity, which we would like to facilitate. All 145,842 employees of Hades are already listed in the corporate directory. This directory will be expanded with information on salary, benefits, hobbies, pictures and relationship status (single, married, married but looking etc).
With a few clicks of a mouse, our employees can find a match within the company and save valuable time and energy. This also supports our goal of cross-business and cross-region relationship building.
3. All information tools will be migrated to clunky web versions, with far less functionality and less stability. However, they will be given web 2.0 names (Grmbl, Yikes, OhYeaH for example) and end users will be able to put them in widgets on their desktop. To complete the web 2.0 vibe, the widgets will be in forever beta and not supported by central IT.
The one with the old librarian
It is Tuesday afternoon, 3.45 PM in the library and I am preparing myself for my weekly “surplus library and archive equipment inventory”. Which is less boring than it sounds… I’ll let you in on a secret.
I was hired several years ago for the corporate library position at Hades Corporation because the librarian at the time was close to retirement. He had been in that position for 40 years and basically built the library, book-by-book, budget dollar for budget dollar. Nobody really knew how the library worked as the librarian was quite secretive about it.
So when I was hired to take over, one of the main tasks assigned to me was to find out how everything worked, since no process was documented and the librarian kept every file locked in his desk. The library catalog was only accessible on his computer, so everyone had to call him to get information. But he didn't mind that people called him, it helped him know what was going on in the company, he said. And he was always there, never a day off (“I don't have a wife, and I like my job”) or a day ill (“books keep you healthy”).
Within the first week I realized that the cloud of mystery around the library served the librarian well. Nobody really bothered him, since no one really knew what he was supposed to do except handling search requests and making sure the books and journals were available … .)
The librarian had cleverly worked out a dual reporting structure, reporting both to IT and facility services. This worked in his advantage, as every time one department wanted something changed, the librarian claimed that the other department did not agree. Since the
IT manager and the facility services manager were not on speaking terms, they never agreed to meet in order to align their needs for library services.
Since he never asked for large investments, never raised issues or even showed the slightest hint of wanting to change, the librarian became something of a stealth persona – flying under the radar of any management attention or reorganization.
I was, of course, very young and full of ideas. Seeing how old fashioned the library at Hades was, my head was full of innovations and I submitted memo after memo to management with challenges and future visions. The old librarian politely smiled every time he read one of my memos and slowly shook his head: “let me tell you, in all of my 40 years I have never bothered management and therefore they never bothered me.”
After a few weeks we built a relationship of trust, as he knew he was leaving and I would take over. Every day he would tell me more about how things worked, or why not. He started to bring me to every meeting and introduce me as his successor, except for one. Every week on Tuesday afternoon at 4 PM, he would excuse himself and tell me he was going make an inventory of surplus archive and library materials for donation to the third world. I did not understand how he could do this every week and I still had not seen a single box ready for shipment to developing nations.
When I asked him about this appointment, he smiled in his little grey beard, his eyes twinkled behind his glasses and he told me: “I will tell you once the time is ready”.
On his very last day, I was very curious to learn about this weekly inventory. He took me down to the basement, where the paper archive was kept. He opened the doors of the archive and walked along the shelves of files and archive boxes. At the end of the section “tax receipts 1990-1999” he stopped. I noticed that behind that cupboard was a small door, almost the same color as the wall. The sign on the door said: “surplus archive and library materials”. With a small key, he opened the door and let me in… .