Grassroots Strategic Planning: Involving Library Staff from the Beginning

Column Editor's Note

This column focuses on the closely related topics of strategic planning and assessment in all types of libraries. The column examines all aspects of planning and assessment including (but not limited to) components, methods, approaches, trends, tools and training. Interested authors are invited to submit articles to the editor at [email protected]. Articles on both theory and practice and examples of both successful and unsuccessful attempts in all types of libraries are invited.

In this issue, Anne Marie Casey, Dean of Retention and Student Success at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, reminds us that real life challenges such as staff resistance and reallocation of campus space have serious impacts on planning. She presents a case study of one library's attempt to deal with these challenges by using a variety of methods, including active employee input, appreciative inquiry, and scenario planning to encourage staff buy-in. For the most part, these attempts proved successful.

Strategic planning is often considered a managerial tool. The management of an organization surveys the environment and develops a plan that they introduce to the organization as a whole. Most modern organizations seek employee involvement in the planning process and feedback to some degree with varied results. But for one academic library, employee involvement in the development and execution of the strategic plans has been a vital part of the processes. The Hunt Library at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has been developing strategic plans for several years with active input from the librarians and staff. This case study chronicles the different approaches the library staff have used to create new plans. One method was to hold a set of retreats where all library staff provided ideas for new initiatives to explore and old processes to retire. Another involved the SOAR approach, which uses appreciate inquiry to determine strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results. A third method employed scenarios to encourage staff input into the next strategic plan. Each of the different approaches yielded interesting results; some failures and many successes. Some processes were more positive than others but they all included mutually agreed-upon strategies that guided the library as it planned future innovations.

KEYWORDS:

• strategic planning
• employee involvement
• appreciative inquiry
• scenario planning