Monday, September 15, 2014

Focus?

OK, after ruminating on the library leadership topic for a few weeks now, it is evident that my greatest challenge is going to be focus.  ramblin' ain't my name for nothing after all.

No but, here is the thing, I am truly excited about this.  Thinking gets me thinking.  Everything these days seems to spur more thoughts, draw more links and point to one of the many ideas, plans, theories and goals I am trying to nail down.

I am trying to juggle it all but suspect I will have to decide "how" I want to hear all this...  and/or what I want to do about it.

I really want everyone to know more; get more information, for things to be more transparent.  But for that information and transparency to be rooted in UNDERSTANDING.  For us not to just know more but to understand better.  What we do, and each other.

I also want to find a way for all the innovation and change in service to better include administration and management, they need to be brought along for this to ever succeed.  Otherwise we continue to live in 2 camps: Old way, new way, and the powerful people of accounting and human resources too often get left in the old way camp.

Locally, I want to find ways to improve teamwork not by learning more about the theory of teamwork but by improving its practice.  We need new methods of work that apply outside the old org charts and are effective.  People get frustrated with teamwork because it promises so much fun and success but often leave us wondering what went wrong.

And that is just to start...
Focus, focus sylvie ....   yeah right.


Fun Stuff:
I have to pick 3 definitions of Leadership.  I chose these 5 and don't know what to drop...
Later I had to read 3 articles and 2 actually beat a drum that sounded a lot like the 1st 2nd quote below.

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” 
 Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” 

“Great leaders don’t want attention, but they use it.  They use it to unite the tribe and to reinforce its sense of purpose.”
 -Seth Godin, Tribes
  
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” 
- Winston Churchill

“I figure if a girl wants to be a legend, she should just go ahead and be one.” 
 -Calamity Jane
...which if you replace legend with leader, is pretty much dead on.  ;)

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