Building Leadership Skills: Planning for the Future

1. Building Leadership Skills: Planning for the Future Instructor: Stacey Aldrich stacey.aldrich@gmail.com An Infopeople Workshop Spring 2007

2. This Workshop Is Brought to You By the Infopeople Project Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project supported by the California State Library. It provides a wide variety of training to California libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered around the state and are open registration on a first-come, first-served basis. For a complete list of workshops, and for other information about the project, go to the Infopeople website at infopeople.org.

3. GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER • Name • Library • Position • What future thing that you have read about or seen in movies are you still waiting for?

4. WORKSHOP OVERVIEW • Making Assumptions Explicit • Environmental Scanning • Trends and Technologies • Scenario Building - Manoa Method • Wrap up and Evaluation

5. HEADLINES 2030 • What are the top 3 headlines of the magazine or newspaper that you have chosen for March 2030?

6. ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE • Important to make explicit • Help to clarify our mental models about the future AssumptionsDecisionsActions

7. FUTURE StrategicDirection StrategicDirection Strategic Direction Strategic Direction Trends Wild Cards Uncertainties Critical Events Discontinuities Strategic Planning

8. ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING • Making a conscientious effort to pay attention to trends, patterns, emerging issues, and potential wild cards. • Finding dynamic connections among the trends and patterns to identify opportunities and challenges.

9. TECHNIQUES • Read/Watch/Listen/Try broadly - look outside of your interests • Keep a file of interesting technologies or social changes and record the patterns that you see • STEEP • Opportunity Hunt

10. STEEP

11. Society Technology Implications? Possibilities? CELL PHONE Economy Ecology Politics

12. Society Technology Implications? Possibilities? FABBING Economy Ecology Politics

13. OPPORTUNITY HUNT

14. IPOD - WHAT IS IT? • 20GB of memory • Holds about 10,000 songs • Also usable as memory • Lithium rechargeable battery • 15 million sold worldwide • Spawned lots of peripherals • New businesses • iTunes 400+ million songs • iMixes • Podcasting • Podcache • Used cross generations

15. IPOD - WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Personal Collections Customization Music/Audio books/Podcasting Proprietary Rip/remix/burn Everyone is a DJ Memory and Storage Capacity e-Books Songs, video, TV shows for 1.99

16. MEMORY & TEXT SOURCE: WISEGEEK.COM - http://www.wisegeek.com

17. IPOD - HOW TO INNOVATE? • Podcast • Book reviews • Story times • How to Podcast sessions • Podcache • Audio tour guides • Treasure hunting with clues from Podcast • iMix parties & DJ Showdowns • Digital audio books • Classes and equipment for local content

18. FIVE TRENDS

19. WHAT IS A TREND? “Clearly observable changes happening today and expected to continue into the future.” strategic foresight: the power of standing in the future

20. FIVE TRENDS • Age of Integration • Converging Communication • Digital Interaction • Sustainability - Green • Robotics

21. TREND 1 - Age of Integration “We are now in the Integration Age. It is about making things work really well together…Google doesn’t “make the Internet.” Google “makes the Internet better.” Pip Coburn, UBS Investment Bank

22. TREND 1 - Examples • iTunes • Socialight • Cozi

23. TREND 2 - Converging Communication • Twitter.com • Speech to text message • Google Ads

24. TREND 3 - Digital Interaction • Leapfrog Fly Pen • Logitech io2 Digital Pen • Singularity

25. TREND 4 - Sustainability -Green • Recycle programs for IT • Market for solving resource shortages • Architectural designs and materials • Arnold’s Green Ultimatum

26. TREND 5 - Robotics

27. SCENARIO BUILDING

28. BRIEF HISTORY OF SCENARIOS • Emerged after WWII as a method of military planning • 1960’s Herman Kahn created business approach • 1970’s Pierre Wack used at Royal Dutch/Shell “The end result, however, is not an accurate picture of tomorrow, but better decisions about the future.” -Peter Schwartz from The Art of the Long View

29. VARIETY OF SCENARIO METHODS • Method 1 • 2 variables • 2 ranges • Create 4 scenarios • Method 2 • Multiple variables • Multiple scenarios Variable 1    Variable 2      

30. MANOA APPROACH • Created by Dr. Wendy Schultz of Infinite Futures • It is designed to create long-term, provocative, transformation images of alternative futures • Good for sparking creativity not strategic planning

31. MANOA APPROACH - HOW • Select at least 3 emerging issues from different STEEP categories • Create futures wheels exploring the impacts for each of the 3 emerging issues • Explore the possible connection points among the 3 future wheels and discuss their impacts • Discuss a possible future created by the 3 emerging issues • Create a “day in the life” of story

32. STEP 1 - TRENDS/EMERGING ISSUES Select the 3 trends from your table or swap with another table that seem most interesting --- maybe even uncertain

33. STEP 2 - CREATE FUTURES WHEELS COMMUNICATION? Put the trend in an inner circle Take a few minutes to imagine possible impacts on a variety of life aspects Connect impacts to the trend with lines Explore connections among the 3 trends. WORK? EDUCATION? HOMES? TREND FAMILIES? ECONOMY? ENVIRONMENT? INFO? Consider secondary impacts

34. EXAMPLE - FUTURES WHEELS NEED MORE WORKERS SMALL BIZ FAIL EDUCATION? NO WORK/ HOME SPLIT 24/7 Service ENVIRONMENT? MULTIPLE COMMUNICATION METHODS INFO? NEED 24/7 IT STAFF

35. EXPLORE CONNECTIONS IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT TREND 1 IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT TREND 2 IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT TREND 3 IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT

36. STEP 2 - CREATE FUTURES WHEELS COMMUNICATION? Put the trend in an inner circle Take a few minutes to imagine possible impacts on a variety of life aspects Connect impacts to the trend with lines Explore connections among the 3 trends. WORK? EDUCATION? HOMES? TREND FAMILIES? ECONOMY? ENVIRONMENT? INFO? Consider secondary impacts

37. STEP 3 - FOCUS QUESTIONS • What skills do staff members need to thrive in this scenario? • What does the organization look like? How many staff? What kind of staff? What are imperative organizational behaviors? • What services and programs does library provide? • How is the library budget distributed in this world? (staffing, collections, technology, etc…) • What is a collection? • What is literacy? • What does research look like? Is reference still alive? What does it look like? • Is there a physical space? If so, what does it need to have? • What is the role of the library in the community? • What kind of technology do you need?

38. STEP 4 - Day in the Life • Review all of the impacts your group imagined for your 3 trends. • Review the answers to your focus questions. • If everything above were true, what would it look like? Describe a day, as if you live there. (blog entry, diary, a news headline)

39. Review • Assumptions • Environmental Scanning • Five Trends • Scenario Building

40. A final thought… “When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people, those who let it happen, those who make it happen, those who wonder what happened.” John M. Richardson,Jr.