Recently I was reviewing some of my news feeds and stumbled across this: Ten Things Library Administrators need to Know about Technology.
What I love about all major projects and innovations is the fact that despite the complexity of the work a few things really can be contributed to success or failure.
While Mr. Tennant focuses on the “stumbling” blocks that make decision makers hesitate I would take his list of 10 things and point out that core issues affect all projects.
- Politics is the Key Success Factor (If you can not get the up front buy-in and continued support of key stakeholders and key personnel such as IT Directors and Department managers (no matter the organization) then the new services, new projects and improvements will drown quickly.
- People make things succeed, not hardware. Invest resources to make sure your Key Resource has what they need to succeed. Frustrating the worker bees with slow processes causes by technology will result in short-cuts, skipped steps and too much work-around and will thus doom the project to fail.
- There is always room for improvement. Following the nursery rhyme advise of “If at first you don’t succeed.” People are behind technology and people are good but not perfect. Not offering solutions because it’s not perfect will result in lost interest, low morale and lack of confidence. Hit the ground and then run forward to the next fix. Mistakes and failures are inevitable, adjust and improve and the rest will follow.
I like Mr. Tenant’s statements and based upon some of my past projects over the past year, I would say that Administrators in any organization need to remember his 10 things, not just Library Administrators.
Constance Ard September 18, 2009
Advertisement
